


Slowly, Through a Vector

by Tweekpuncher



Category: South Park
Genre: Drama, Funny, Love Triangle, M/M, Slow Burn, and they were ROOMMATES, there's two beds sorry, uh im stupid rn i'll add more tags later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 29,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tweekpuncher/pseuds/Tweekpuncher
Summary: Tweek and Craig haven't spoken in almost four years now. When, as always, the universe shoves them back together again, things get dramatic, because fictional characters must suffer for our entertainment. Also Kenny's there.
Relationships: Craig Tucker/Tweek Tweak, Kenny McCormick/Tweek Tweak
Comments: 44
Kudos: 38





	1. THEY PUT YOU IN MACHINES

Dare: Be more patient with Mom and Dad

A few weeks after I was born, my parents sent out flyers and put up a new billboard. It was a picture of little me, in my little car seat, with my mom’s hand coming in from the right, directing a baby bottle of black coffee into my mouth. The caption read, “Flavor so smooth, even a baby can enjoy,” and then under that, “TWEEK BROS.” I’m not saying that wasn’t a clever advertisement or anything. I just don’t imagine most parents would _actually_ give their month-old baby bottles full of coffee.

I didn’t do daycare or preschool. Instead, I had my little kennel in the corner. I don’t mean a playpen. I guess when you rub cocaine on a toddler’s gums to keep them from crying, you end up having some difficulty keeping them off of the ceiling. It was a nice kennel, to be fair. I don’t actually remember, but I’ve seen pictures. The idea of curling up in a nice, safe little cage full of pillows and blankets becomes more and more appealing as I get older.

My point is: the coffee shop has always been a pretty major part of my life. Like a third parent, or like an older sibling that my parents care way, way more about than me. It’s my past, my present, and my future. Odds are, if the world doesn’t end or I don’t end up in a horrible accident or catching a super-virus that makes my organs melt or get hit by a falling A/C unit and end up in a coma or get murdered on my walk home, I’ll die right there at the counter.

So when I surrender to the fact that no sleep will come and descend to the kitchen, where my mom and dad sit drinking their coffee, I’m more than a little perturbed when my dad announces loftily, “Tweek, we’re closing the shop. We’re leaving for Europe in three days.”

I close the fridge door. “What?”

“I said, ‘we’re closing the shop. We’re leaving for Europe in three days.’”

“Ugh! I heard you, but _what_?” I haven’t even started my senior year yet. I don’t speak any European languages that aren’t English. I don’t have my things packed. I don’t have any of those outlet converter things. I hate tea. I don’t even watch The Great British Bake-Off.

Dad’s busy taking a long draw from his cup, so Mom speaks up. “We’ve needed some major renovations for a while now. The contractor said we’ll be able to open back up in three months or so, and since you’re nearly an adult, we decided you’re ready to stay home by yourself, so your father and I decided to take our first trip since our honeymoon.” As soon as my dad puts his cup down, my mom picks hers up.

“Why…why would you phrase it like that?” I ask my dad, a little slack-jawed.

He’s the picture of peace, sitting at the kitchen table with the light of the sunrise streaming in so gently, holding his cup in both hands like a woman. “What do you mean, son?”

I remember my dare. I close my eyes and see red. Not angry red, just the blood vessels in my eyelids backlit by the sun. I do one set of my breathing: five seconds out, five second hold, then five seconds in. “Never mind. Okay.” I don’t know why I ever leave my room without a fidget in my hand. “So we’re _temporarily_ closing the shop, and the _two of you,_ not me, are going to Europe for a vacation.”

“No, Tweek, not a vacation.” My dad chuckles, like I’m a fucking moron for thinking so. Of course he chooses that moment to take another slow sip instead of expounding upon that statement. I look to Mom for help, but she’s got her face obscured behind her mug. You’d think after all these years, I would have no choice but to learn to be patient. I did have a choice, and I chose not to. I screech in the back of my throat out of frustration, which draws as much attention as blinking would.

The coffee cups go down. My dad’s smiling benignly.

“So?”

“So what, son?”

Five seconds out. Five second hold, to let a few unneeded braincells slough off. Five seconds in. “So the coffee shop is reopening, but you’re going to be in Europe?”

“Of course not, dear.” My mom chuckles now. They’re like the world’s worst news anchors.

“So you’re coming back from Europe. But it’s not a vacation.”

“No, son, this is no vacation.”

“…So what is it!?”

“This is a journey, to celebrate the next stage of our lives together. To reinvigorate our marriage, and learn to love one another like newlyweds again, even though your mother’s breasts have sagged nearly to her waist.”

Mom nods like my dad didn’t just insult her.

“So it’s a vacation.”

“No.”

“Okay.” Five, five, five. “For how long?”

“We’ll be back in late August. Before your school starts up again.” Mom’s better at explaining things, in the sense that being stabbed in the shoulder is better than being stabbed in the face.

I haven’t had coffee in nearly an hour, and this whole rigamarole was doing very little to assuage my caffeine withdrawal migraine. Before I can figure out which concern to tackle next, I take a minute to prepare my typical breakfast: black coffee and ice cubes in a novelty oversized coffee cup that was made with the intent of being a gag gift. My life is a gag. Once my empty stomach is filled with acid that I know from experience tastes the exact same on the way back up, I’m ready to tackle my long list of things to stress out about.

“So I’m going to be alone. In the house. All summer.”

“Yes.” They answer in unison.

In response to that, I give an articulate and well-thought-out growl.

“And I won’t have a job.”

“Correct.”

“But you’ll be leaving money, right? So I don’t starve and die?”

“We’ll be offering you a very generous period of pre-paid time off. Your mother and I have done the math, and we’ll be providing you with the same amount of compensation you’d earn over the course of a usual summer. Now, son, don’t grow accustomed to this kind of treatment; in the future, you’ll be treated like any other employee. If you don’t work, you won’t be paid.”

I skip over the fact that I’m the only employee. “You only pay me a dollar an hour.”

“Now, dear, don’t be greedy. Do you know any of your little friends who receive forty dollars a week in allowance? That’s an awful lot of money for someone with a roof over their head and food on their plate.”

Fivefivefive. That’s one minute I’ve spent now on my breathing. “How am I supposed to get around? I can’t drive.”

“Where would you be going? You don’t have any friends, son.”

“ _IHAVEFRIENDS_.” Shit. I raised my voice. Shit. Very calmly and quietly, I turn on my heel and exit the kitchen. My coffee and I tromp upstairs, back to my bedroom.

In my room, nothing has a set place. Even my bed is pulled out from the wall at an awkward forty-five-degree angle. I have a bookshelf, but it’s too full of dirty coffee mugs and figurines and less-than-half finished art projects, so I keep all my books on the floor. Since having books all over the floor makes it hard to walk, I threw my rug over them to give me traction. I had sheets and a pillow at one point, but I haven’t seen them in almost a year.

There’s just one thing that has a place. A spiral-bound notebook I keep on my desk. Sometimes it gets stuff piled on top of it, and I nervously unthreaded half of the spiral-binding, but it’s right there where it belongs. I brush a few pencil shavings and chewed-up colored pencils to the ground and open it up. Every page is filled with lines, and every line is the same. On the left, I write my dares. Then on the right, a check mark or an x. There are a lot more xes than checks.

The very last dare says, “Be more patient with Mom and Dad.” On the right, I scrawl an x.


	2. DOWN THE DRAIN, OUT OF THE WAY

Truth: I’m very, very stupid.

I don’t advertise it, but my family’s kinda broke. Nowhere near McCormick broke, but close enough to justify a little background hum of anxiety at all times. My mom’s the only one who’s been bringing home a paycheck for the past few years, ever since my dad quit his job to become a full-time painter. I don’t think he’s sold a single piece. I just don’t think many people want paintings of teenage boys making out in various stages of undress in their house. (For the record, I am _really_ not a fan of my dad’s OC, Greg, who only came into existence after my mom threatened to sandpaper my dad’s dick down to nothing if he didn’t stop painting pictures of me with my friends. “With” my friends.)

I’ve run through the typical circuit of teenage jobs: fast food, bagging at a grocery store, hauling mulch, blah blah blah. Uncle Skeeter pays Tricia to run all the bar’s social media, which is fucking bullshit. He says he chose her over me because I’m “a little asshole” and I “keep posting articles about health code violations and tagging the bar.” Whatever. I don’t know if it’s a pride thing or what, but my parents never expected us to contribute to, like, the household money. We buy our own clothes and any food we want to eat that isn’t already in the house and all that, but it’s not our job to keep the lights on or whatever.

I never really bothered saving money, aside from when it was for a specific thing I wanted. I didn’t think anything of blowing through my paychecks on weed and online games. Between jobs, I just bum shit off of my friends. I always knew when and where my next meal was coming.

I failed my sophomore year. I made up the credits in summer school so I was able to call myself a junior in the fall. My mom told me then that if I wasn’t applying myself in school, I was out of the house on my eighteenth birthday. Dumbass sixteen-year-old me thought he smelled bullshit. It’s not like I just blew off my whole junior year. I got 100s in my two computer electives, and a 95 in science, which would be even higher if it weren’t for fucking valence spheres which are dirty little fuckers that I hate. History’s no problem, either; I got like, a B, I think. My problems were just in math, English, and gym, which happen to be the three subjects people actually care whether you’re any good at or not. (For the record, I could have aced gym if I wanted to. I just didn’t give a shit.)

Even if I were the kind of guy who freaks out, I wouldn’t have. There’s two summer school sessions, so making up English and Math wouldn’t be a problem. They try to pretend that they can squeeze the whole year into a month, but the end result still ends up being less homework, fewer tests, and a lot less content to cover. I’d have to double up on gym the next year, which was gonna be a massive pain, but doable. I didn’t bother going to those exams, but I breezed through the other ones.

I guess I thought I’d done well enough to be able to claim I’d “applied myself.” I definitely didn’t think my mom’s threats were actually serious.

“June 12th.”

I open my eyes a little, and then a lot when I realize that my mom’s face is inches from mine. Even though I’m safe under the covers, I still scrunch up my body. I am not wearing clothes.

She’s holding a couple of pieces of paper pinched between her thumb and forefinger, held out like they’re dirty underwear. She gives them a shake that must have been meaningful to her and repeats my birthday. “June 12th.”

“What? Where is…what?”

“What did I tell you last summer? And after your first semester? And on spring break? And last _week_?”

“…Practice safe sex?”

She whaps me on the head with the papers. “I. Said. If you didn’t apply yourself, you’d be out on your eighteenth birthday. Are these the grades of someone applying themselves? A _thirty_ in math? How do you even fail gym? And English? Craig, you _speak_ English.”

“…When did you say that?”

It doesn’t hurt at all, but when she starts whacking me in the face with the papers as hard and fast as she can, it gets the message across. “June 12th, Craig. I want you out that day. Not June 13th. June 12th.”

“You’re kicking me out?”

“That’s right.”

“Forever?”

That makes her pause, but just briefly. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“But I’m—I’m a kid. I still need you to schedule my allergist appointments and tell me I’m handsome.” I’m being very uncool but I’m feeling very uncool so that kind of makes sense.

“Craig, I’m not cutting you out of our lives. You’re very handsome. And your father and I love you very much. So much, that we can’t sit by and watch while you throw your life away. You’re a smart boy, Craig, and you can make something of yourself, but not without a good kick in the pants.” That phrase sounds so folksy but it always strikes terror into my heart. Last time she said that, she took my Xbox. I miss that Xbox.

“Where am I supposed to go?” I’m practically mewling. If I weren’t me, I’d kick my ass.

“You’re an adult, and it’s time for you to deal with your own problems.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Get a job.”  
“But I love you.”

“I love you too. Now get up. You’ve got a lot of things to figure out in the next four days.”


	3. ONE BIG SUGAR RUSH

Dare: finish your last week of work without having a public meltdown.

I’ve completely emptied my brain. I have no thoughts. My brain is a wad of fiberfill. I took three of the teeny tiny pills, two of the triangular ones, three orange-and-green, finished off the blues, and nibbled a quarter of one of the nasty weed gummies Kenny’s creepy brother sold me. I put THC oil under my tongue, meditated, masturbated, smoked four cigarettes, and ran through an entire playlist of calming binaural beats. The lunch rush hasn’t even started yet.

The bell dingles. I perceive a face, with hair and some kind of body. That’s nice. Then I return my attention to the customer in front of me, whom has similar qualities. I don’t hear their voice, but I know what they want. Caffe Americana with a squirt of bourbon flavoring, with latte art of a dog on top. That’s not a drink I usually do art for, but I set to steaming the milk anyway. This feels right.

“Hey Jitterbug,” a voice off to my side drawls flirtatiously.

My brain’s dead, but my body is still moving unimpeded. My mouth moves of its own volition to say, “Hey Kenny.”

He perches on one of the stools at the bar off to the side, putting his chin neatly into his palms. He looks like a middle schooler. “Got anything for me?”

I ignore him while I whip up the order. Even with my flawless muscle memory, it takes a few minutes. I remember now that I make this every single day, for Officer Barbrady. I’m starting to sober up. This does not please me.

Once Barbrady leaves, grinning at the same dog I make for him every day, I head into the back to grab a tray of bald cupcakes and a bowl of frosting. When I return to Kenny and after setting everything down, only then do I ask, “What?”

“Just wanted to see if you have any day-olds or uglies.” He starts frosting the cupcakes without having to be asked.

“Uh, not today.”

He very clumsily slops frosting down on the cupcake he’s holding so that it tears down the middle. “Whoops. Now you do.”

Kenny’s really good looking, all things considered. He’s build like David—not Michaelangelo’s beefcake, but the twinky little Donatello one—with a face and hairstyle that make me think of California, which I don’t actually know anything about. I think his sister cuts his hair. She does a good job. His teeth aren’t straight or white, but he has more of them than anyone else combined from the other side of the tracks.

Something that hurts happens inside me. Then it’s gone. Easy as that.

He’s sucking icing off of his fingers, keeping provocative eye contact. It’s much more funny than it is sexy. None of my smile muscles want to work today, though.

“Did you make any extra drinks by accident? Maybe something iced? Hazelnut? Probably a large?”

I’m about to turn him down, like I do probably ninety percent of the time, but then I think about my parents. “Huh, you know what? I think I did.”

After I blend his drink, filling it past the lid with whipped cream, I think to add on, “Did I mention you’re the one millionth customer? That means anything you want is free.”

“Anything?” His eyes drift south.

“Watch it.”

He rounds the counter. He has no difficulty opening the display, almost like he’s done it before. Through a mouthful of cold paninis and danishes, he mumbles something. Then he swallows and tries again. “Isn’t your dad gonna be pissed?”

I try to laugh sarcastically, but I just kinda scream a little. Moving past it. “Do you know how much minimum wage is in Colorado?”

“$11.10.”

I’m a little thrown off guard. I didn’t expect him to actually know. Again, moving past it. “I make _one dollar_ an hour. I can’t exactly calculate how much wealth I accrue for them, but it sure as _shit_ is more than _one dollar_. So fuck their stupid profit margin. Fuck it. I make the stupid pastries, and I’ll give them away if I want to.”

He bows in head in deference. “Comrade.”

“Comrade,” I nod in response.

“Why so full of consciousness and righteous rage, my angry young man?” He shoves a salad plate-sized cookie into his mouth. Kenny is very good at fitting things into his mouth. Genitals especially.

I give myself a second to spasm and make noises. I’m a lot better now than I’ve ever been before, but I still have to empty out my tweeks every now and again. “My parents told me _yesterday_ that we’re closing down the shop for the summer, and they’re going to Europe for _three months_. Leaving me _alone_.”

Kenny munches meditatively at his fourth muffin. Carefully metering his words, he says, “So your parents, who you hate, are going to be gone all summer. And you’re going to have an entire house to yourself. And you don’t have to work this shitty job. And you’re…mad.”

“Yes I’m mad!” I slap my hands down on the counter. “Have you _met_ me? Do you think I’m the kind of person who should be left alone for three months straight? This,” I wave my hands over myself, “is me _with_ supervision. I’ve been awake for three days straight. I have pulled out every single one of my arm hairs. Do you know how many downers I had to take to be this calm right now? _Do you_?”

Gently, Kenny places his palms flat against my cheeks. My shaking goes from “paint mixing machine” to “cheap vibrator.” I don’t know why that works. I used to think it was because I loved him. I love him. Just not like that. I don’t think I ever really did.

“You won’t be alone. I mean, you won’t be alone the whole time. We can still hang out, right? And Stan and Kyle and the girls can come see you. Hey, we can call the goth kids. See what they’re up to. They can come up and sacrifice me to Mictēcacihuātl again.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Don’t talk to the goth kids. Don’t look into Henrietta’s eyes. She’s a horrible devil woman. Don’t look her in the vag, either.”

“I don’t like vag.”

“Good.” He nods firmly. I can’t tell if he’s joking or not sometimes. “How many days ‘til they leave?”

“Uh, the day after tomorrow.”

“Cool. Okay.” Kenny stacks the bowl of frosting on top of the tray of unfrosted cupcakes, and then shoves his drink down into it. “I’m gonna head out. Stay strong, Tweety Bird.”

“Will do, Pepe.”

And he leaves with half of our bakeware.

Truth: I am having a very hard time maintaining my cool and disinterested persona while begging everyone I know for a corner to sleep in.

Clyde’s still mad at me for writing a call-out post that was, in my defense, hilarious. He blames me for Lola breaking up with him, even though _he’s_ the one that doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom. Jimmy offers to ask his parents, but I’ve never been able to figure out how to use the toilets in his house, so I tell him not to worry about it. Token’s parents hate me because they think I’m a bad influence, which is true, but also fuck them. My mom told Skeeter not to offer me any charity. Kenny’s house is not an option for so, so many reasons.

I still have tomorrow, but I feel weird being in the house any more than I have to, so I’m sitting in the park, watching the preschoolers play like a fucking creep. I must have been a preschooler at some point, but that doesn’t really sound like something I’d do.

I sent out applications. I’m not expected to get called, interviewed, hired, and paid in the next thirty-six hours, though. Yesterday, I spent a long time on the internet and on the phone, discussing my “academic future” with a bunch of very nice-sounding ladies. I’m not signed up or anything, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to make up some credits by taking some college courses after school. Now, I don’t have to worry about fitting working in around summer school. Of course next year I’ll have to do high school all day, work all night, and then also fit in the extra classes and the extra load of schoolwork, but that’s Future Me’s problem, and Future Me is a dick. I hate that douche.

I hate that it’s a beautiful day out. The sun’s warm, but there’s a nice breeze, and fat wads of nimbus clouds to block out any excessive sunlight. Usually, those puffy white bastards are my sworn enemy, but as long as they’re only obscuring the one star, we have a temporary truce. The kids are all getting along, providing the pleasant background noise of innocent laughter. The fuckers.

I wish I had the luxury of being too depressed to answer my phone when it vibrates.

“Hey nerd, where’s your pocket protector?”

“Uh, in my pocket. Duh. Look, Kenny, I’m being depressed here. Can you not bother me with any of your Little Orphan Annie, ‘I’ve gone a hard knock life but the sun’ll come out tomorrow’ bullshit?” An ice cream trucks passes by, filling the air with a cheerful stream of music, because of course it does. I’m sure a butterfly will land on my nose any second.

“Jeez, dude, bite my head off. I was just calling to bully you.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

There’s a brief, huffy silence. “Well it’s not fun if you don’t bully me back.”

“Good. No fun for anyone.”

“You just hate me ‘cause I’m a foot shorter than you and have already gotten more ass, dick, and pussy than you ever will in your entire life. And blowjobs. Also remember when I had a threesome with the Cottswald twins? That shit was nuts. Their dad pepper sprayed me. Worth it. And remember that redhead Raisins girl? The hot one, but not the hottest one? She had this whole fucking luggage set—”

“This is the worst you’ve ever bullied me.”

“…What were we talking about?”

“Nothing. You have never said anything of value in the entirety of your life.”

“Yeah, that’s what—I wanted to tell you that Tweek’s just giving shit out at the coffee shop. I figured you might wanna stock up for when you’re homeless. I’m sure he can wrap it up in a stick and bindle for you.”

I chew my lip for a moment.

“What? You guys aren’t weird, right? You still hang out, right?”

“I mean…we’ve done stuff in the same group, I guess. Not together. I don’t know if I’ve said ten words to the kid since ninth grade.” Tweek’s the kinda guy that you always wanna call a kid. I’m pretty sure I’m the oldest kid in the class on account of repeating kindergarten, but he’s only a couple months younger, and everyone else in school still treats him like a kid.

That’s right. His birthday’s in August. He’s a Leo, even though he acts nothing like it. His birthstone is peridot. Same color as his eyes.

I wish you could pick and choose what you remember. That brain-space could’ve been used to store that formula for that math thing what I don’t be knowing. Also I failed English.

“Well, here’s your chance to start on making things not weird.”

“We’re not weird.”

“I’m not sayin’ to go rekindle your lost love. Just get a muffin if you want. God damn. We’re not friends anymore. Call me tomorrow.” Dead air on the other end of the phone.


	4. SAID THE KNUCKLE TO THE CONCRETE

Dare: finish your last week of work without having a public meltdown, part two.

The lunch rush passes by quickly. It doesn’t take a lot of time to tell thirty people, “we’re out of food.” Clyde stops in on his walk over to Token’s, and we talk for a minute about how he’s handling the breakup. Other than that, barely anyone comes in. On toward later afternoon, I’m so bored I’m sleepy. Not that I could actually sleep. At five, some of the regulars who work second shift’ll be in. They always just order black coffees to go, but at least it’s something break up the time.

When the bell dingles, I look up with my inconsistently-used customer service smile. When I see who it is, I let it drift down into a neutral line.

It’s not like I don’t see Craig around all the time. We have a lot of mutual friends. We go to a school with only five hundred total students. It’s a small town. There’s no reason to shit my pants just because he’s walking into my coffee shop. Alone.

“Hey,” he drones, giving an awkward little wave.

I don’t know if Craig is attractive or not. He’s tall. He’s very, very tall. I have to tilt my head back so far, my entire throat’s open for attack. It doesn’t help that I’m only five feet tall, because I’m God’s wretched little chew toy. A lot of girls talk about how hot he is, but sometimes I think girls use the words “hot” and “tall” interchangeably.

I realize that I’ve been staring for a little too long. I, too, raise my hand into an awkward little wave, and parrot, “Hi.”

He looks at me. I look at the pin of Andromeda on his hat. He looks at the espresso machine. I look at him.

“Did you wanna order something, or…?”

“Oh, I don’t have any money.”

I look at him. He looks at me.

“So…”

“So, uh, I heard that uh, you’re giving away, uh…,” he’s kind of cringing as he speaks, “free food?”

“Oh. From Kenny?”

“Yeah. From Kenny.”

I nod. “Yeah, we’re cleared out. Kenny ate everything.”

“Ah. Uh. Cool. Nevermind.” He nods dopily to himself before turning to leave.

When he’s halfway out, for no God damn reason, I call out, “Craig?”

He turns and looks at me with raised eyebrows. His eyebrows are kinda thick, but in a good way, I guess.

I let my mouth hang open just a second. I don’t have anything to say. I give up on my brain and let my mouth take the wheel. “Do you have any weed?”

“What, like, to sell?”

“Uh. Just. Y’know.”

“I’ve got what’s in my vape. I’ve hit it a few times since I filled it, though, so you probably don’t wanna buy it. Oh, did you mean you wanted me to buy you some when I turn eighteen?”

“No, I, uh.” I look over my shoulder, to the door toward the back. “I can try to fix you something real quick with what we have in the back. It won’t be anything fancy, but, uh.”

“Oh. Uh, that’d be great. Did you want what I have?”

I roll my lips, sucking them between my teeth. Craig seems a lot less cocky than usual. That always drove me batshit, the cockiness. Like it’s so cool to not care about anything. But he’s “uh”ing and “oh”ing like…well, like me.

There’s a bell under the counter. I pop it up in front of the register. “Come into the back with me and we can smoke it together.”

The vape has to charge. I take the time to stack some bread heels with whatever vegetables haven’t gone brown yet and an American single onto a paper towel.

“I haven’t been back here in a long time,” Craig muses, staring at the little red light.

“Mm.” I don’t want to reminisce. “Do you still—do you like milk?”

“Uh, yeah.” He sets his vape down on the box where he’s sitting and moves over to the prep counter. I plop the jug down next to him as he does his best to keep the shitty sandwich together while he lifts it to his mouth. I wish I had made something for myself. I’m not hungry. I just want to have an excuse not to talk. The hum of the refrigerator isn’t quite loud enough to drown out the sound of him chewing.

“How long does that thing take to charge?”

“Uh.” He looks over his shoulder. The little light’s green. “It’s ready.”

We hit it and pass like we’re at a party, but it’s just the two of us, so we’re kind of just playing a weird game of hot potato. It’s rough, which I don’t mind. Good highs always feel bad on the way in. I leave a couple times to pour some coffees out front, not bothering to charge anyone. It takes a long time to spend it, which I don’t mind a bit. It shuts us both up.

My mom told me that after the renovations, we’ll have a real kitchen back here, and not just a cement square full of pipes with a fridge and an oven shoved in the corner. That’ll be nice. Hopefully it’ll do something about the house centipede situation.

“So…how’s things?” He sighs.

“Uh. Not great, honestly.”

“Oh, yeah?”

It’s not like it’s a really personal problem or anything. I figure, what the hell, and tell him about yesterday.

Truth: I’m kind of a burn out, and not in a fun way.

To fill time, I tell him about the day before yesterday.

He’s twitching as bad as I’ve seen in years. His voice is calm, though. “Wow. I like my problem a lot more than your problem.”

We’re sitting at the bar out front now. I don’t know what time the shop closes, but it must be soon. No one’s come in in a while.

Tweek’s cute. That’s just kind of a fact. I don’t think he’s even five feet tall. His weight fluctuates a lot depending on what meds he’s on. There have been a couple times where he’s been even chubbier than Clyde, but then sometimes he’s so skinny he has to wear gloves and multiple sweaters to keep from turning blue. Clyde told me that. I didn’t ask. But right now, he’s kind of in a comfortable middle. He’s got those huge sanpaku eyes, and teeny baby hands that I kinda wanna put in my mouth in a not-at-all sexual way. He’s not pretty. Nobody in their right mind would call him handsome or hot. But he’s cute.

“They’re kinda similar problems, huh? We’re both…alone.” Cheesy. “I guess.” That helped.

Tweek takes a very deliberate drink of his coffee. He’s got his sweater sleeves down over his hands. He’s such a bottom. “You still have tonight and tomorrow night, right? That’s something.”

“Yeah.” Being high is making me feel better, but I still know I’ll feel awful when I come down, so I can’t really lean into it the way I want to. “When do your parents leave?”

“The day after tomorrow. Oh, so, on your birthday I guess.”

“Heh. Same day I’m getting kicked out.” I peer over to him to watch his reaction. None. “It’s funny how things always happen to us together.”

Without a hint of malice, he shakes his head and says, “Nothing’s happened to us together in a long time.”

There’s a little pile of sugar on the bar in front of him. He sweeps it to the ground before standing, turning his back to me. “I have to start closing up soon.”

“Oh. Yeah, I should get going anyway.” He’s staring at the espresso machine as if it’s the one talking to him. “So. See you around.”

“Yeah. See you.”

I hoist my backpack up onto my shoulder and walk out.

It was dumb of me to say something like that. I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t high. Maybe if I wasn’t high all the time, I would have cared about school, and I wouldn’t be getting kicked out right now.

Woulda shoulda woulda.

That night, when I’m scrolling Twitter in my bed, trying to memorize the feeling of a mattress in case I never lay on one again, I pass a tweet by Tweek. We’ve always been mutuals, but we never comment or even like each other’s posts. Everyone in South Park is mutuals, so it doesn’t really mean much. I usually have no idea what he’s talking about. I kind of have an idea right now, though.

“fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufcukyouduckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckoyufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou”

Clyde retweeted it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people who think every vaguepost is about them are annoying


	5. NO LIGHTS! NO MUSIC!

Dare: tell Mom and Dad how I really feel in case they get kidnapped by an elite hunting club or lost in the catacombs under Paris or burned alive in a wicker man or turned into a werewolf in London or converted to a weird summer solstice cult or home invaded in Austria or captured by a weird German surgeon with a scat fetish or accidentally adopt a murderous thirty-year-old with a putui

I ran out of room on the page.

Yesterday was absolute shit. I worked with Dad, who spends more time being in the way while chatting with customers than actually serving them. Made much worse by the fact that my dad needed to tell every single god damn person who came in about all of his plans for the summer, and that we were doing everything at half-price to empty out the stock. I was so wiped, I actually slept for a few hours last night.

Around three, I jolted up from a nightmare. I dreamed that I looked in the mirror and all of my teeth were long and skinny and brown and coming out at weird angles and overlapping and disgusting so I started pulling them out and they came free like they were never attached to my gums but then I had no teeth. I know teeth dreams are super common, and I’ve definitely had scarier dreams, but nightmares are just different somehow. I stared out into the darkness, gulping air, feeling my teeth with my fingers, too terrified to move until my legs jolted me up and forward out into the hall, into the bathroom. In the mirror, I was so, so ugly, but I had as many teeth as I did the day before. Desperate to see that I’m not the only person in the world, I went into my parent’s bedroom and listened to them breathe and snore for some amount of time. I’m not sure how long. Then, because all the air in my bedroom was too tight, I curled up in the bathtub and watched Youtube on my phone until I heard my parents’ alarm go off.

The sounds of them fucking around in that frenzied way old people getting ready to take a flight fuck around centers me enough in my body to make lying in bed tolerable. Without really intending to, but without trying to avoid it, I end up drifting off again. Not enough to dream, but enough to wake up with a migraine.

“Tweek! We’re leaving!” My mom can yell without raising her voice at all.

“Yes, son! Come say goodbye just in case you die while we’re away!”

I squeeze my eyes shut, steeling myself.

Downstairs, tripping over my too-long pajama pants, I stumble to the foyer. Mom and Dad are standing, weirdly formally, as always. Mom’s got her hands folded over her apron. Why is she wearing an apron to go on a flight. Why are they like this. Why does God hate me.

“Well, son, this is goodbye forever.” My dad says, smiling knowingly, like he’s the guy on the oatmeal tube or something. I don’t take the bait.

My mom pulls me close, shoving my face into her boobs the way I hate. If I died by suffocation in my mom’s cleavage, I’d never hear the end of it, not even in death. She kisses me on top of my head with a big, deliberate “mwuah.” “We’ll miss you very much, dear. Be responsible. Make good choices. I love you.”

“I…I love you too, Mom. Ech. For some reason.” She lets me go, and I take a very unsubtle step backwards.

My dad claps his hand on my shoulder, making my knees buckle. “Son, I just want you to remember…there are 3.7 million home invasions each year.”

I nod in understanding. “Dad…eh…I really want you to know…I fucking hate you and I hope you get traveler’s diarrhea and die.”

Both he and my mom chuckle loud and long. The chuckle their way out the door, to the car, through loading up their luggage, and down the driveway, where my dad takes a hand from the wheel to wave strongly at me.

I give him the finger in return, holding it high, long after they disappear around the corner.

-

I passed my dare before noon, so I scribble down a second one, just to keep myself motivated.

Dare: Stay in the house alone all day.

Blasting thrash metal doesn’t help. It usually makes me feel tough, but now it just makes me worry that no one will hear me if I fall down and break both legs and have to scream for help. I try to leave my favorite movie on for background noise, but for once, _The Home Alone Slasher 2: He’s Literally In Your Basement Right Now,_ does nothing to improve my mood. I turn on all the lights, but then I worry about overloading the electrical system and causing a massive explosion, so I turn them all off. Then I do a careful tour around the house, making sure nothing is plugged in or in the process of bursting into flames.

“Hey Tweety, I’m at work, so tell me real quick.” Kenny talk-shouts into the phone over the growl of the forklift.”

Laying in my parents’ bed makes me feel a little better. I tap my socked toes together a little poutily. “I don’t actually have anything to say.”

“Did they leave yet?”

“Like…forty minutes ago.”

“Not going so good?”

“Ugh…nah, I’m fine. Go back to work. I’ll talk to you later.” I hang up before he can try to baby me. After lightly tossing my phone over the edge of the bed, I sprawl out like a snow angel. There’s a spiderweb up in the corner, or just some hanging dust or something. It’s definitely not Japanese Lady Ghost hair. It’s not.

Truth: My favorite birthday was my 11th.

Tweek got his parents to give him thirty dollars. We took the bus together out to the Planetarium. There were maybe three other people in the building other than employees. They did the hour-long noon show just for us, letting me yell out questions, talking to us by name, asking us to name fake constellations. We ate a lunch we’d packed—crackers and a Capri Sun for me and a Yeti thermos full of coffee and a baggy full of pills for Tweek. We sat in the dark IMAX theater where they played a looping video of classical music over satellite footage, and Tweek gave me first and by far the worst hand job I’ve ever had. Back home, we trimmed his nails and tried again, before giving up and watching Chinpokomon movies until we fell asleep on the couch.

My least favorite birthday is this one, obviously.

Weirdly, my parents still got me gifts. I guess they bought them before they decided to kick me out. It feels very weird, tearing snowman-patterned wrapping paper off of a nice set of studio headphones I’m sure my parents had to rearrange money to afford, trying to smile and act grateful, them trying to smile and pretend this is all that’s going on right now. It’s a little bit of a relief on the pressure when Tricia loudly asks, “So when is he leaving?”

The deadline to be out is just “today,” but it’s just too damn awkward to hang around and wait. After eating breakfast, taking a shower, and brushing my teeth, I gather only what I consider absolute necessities into my school backpack, along with a grocery bag full of changes of clothes.

Out in the driveway, my mom holds too tightly on my forearms, like an angry hug. “You can come back and get your stuff when you find a place.” She’s looking me in the eyes. I’m looking her in the shoulder.

“Okay, Mom.”

“We’ll keep paying for your phone and your car insurance. Do you have the health insurance card I gave you? Did you put it somewhere safe?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Will you call me? Will you text me every day?” It’s almost like I’m the one insisting I leave.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Will you always remember that I love you so much?”

“Yes, Mom.”

She squeezes extra tight. I can feel her thumbs push bruises into my skin. Some God damned birthday. My dad comes in for a hug, arms spread. I “accidentally” spill my backpack and drop to my knees to pick everything up. When I stand, it’s on the other side of my dad, by the car door.

“Craig, please don’t hate us.” My mom’s voice goes thick. She’s swallowing tears.

“I don’t, Mom.” My tongue moves, fumbles, and then I force out, “I love you too.”

They watch me from the end of the driveway as I pull out, picking a direction at random, going nowhere.

-

Truth: I’m not really all that sorry about what I did to Clyde.

“So you’re really, actually sorry?” Clyde huffs. He’s wiggling my antenna back and forth, making it whip in the air. I had to squeeze my car in behind his dad’s, so we’re blocking off the sidewalk.

“Yeah, man. I deleted it and everything.” Never mind that everyone we know has already seen it.

“I wash my hands after I shit, you know. Just not always when I pee. And colostomy reversals don’t even use donor parts. I don’t have a pig colon.” His eyebrows drop low, like he’s really focusing on that antenna.

“Deadass, I didn’t think people would actually take it seriously. It was meant as satire of the whole cancel culture. That’s why I chose my best friend, to really highlight the cannibalism of performative outrage on social media.” I picked him because he doesn’t wash his hands after he pees and that’s gross. “Do you think you can patch things up with Lola?”

“No, Craig, no I don’t.” He glares up at me. Clyde’s cute, too. I’m about as sexually attracted to him as I am to Pooh Bear, which is not at all, but I like looking at his stupid little face. I wouldn’t admit that out loud at gun point.

“…Have you talked to Bebe?”

“No.” He mumbles, shoving his phone into his hip pocket.

“So if I looked at your phone right now, there wouldn’t be any calls or texts to Bebe?”

“No, there wouldn’t.”

“So let me look at your phone.”

He makes a shitty attempt at looking aghast. “What, you don’t trust me? You think I’m that desperate?”

I pull my phone out. “I’m gonna read the thing.”

“Don’t read the thing. I know the thing.”

“I’m gonna read it.” I bring up a screenshot of a text. “’Craig: please keep this text on hand to remind Clyde whenever necessary. I do not love him. I do not like him. I do not care enough about him to dislike him.’”

“I _know_. You don’t have to read it again.”

“’It is only because his hungry fat boy mouth is cheaper than the batteries required to keep my vibrator running that I have ever deigned to willingly occupy the same room as him. I am only capable of achieving orgasm by pretending that he is not there, and that I am with someone I actually like and am attracted to.’”

“I _get it_. Look dude, I just really like eating pussy. Like, think of how much you like eating dudes’ butts. That’s how much I like eating pussy.”

“I don’t eat ass.” I put my phone away, satisfied that I’ve done my bro-ly duty. “So you know that Bebe isn’t going to fall in love with you, no matter how many times you tongue-fuck her?”

“Why are we intervening on me right now, hobo? Why don’t we talk about how your only means of shelter is a two-door that you can only fit into with your knees bent up to your ears, you long bitch? You tall bitch? You long, tall bitch?”

I don’t admit that he has a point, but I do lean back on the car, out of his space. “Did you talk to your dad?”

“Yeah.” The way he says it, I know it’s a no-go. “He said you can park in front of the shoe store and use the wifi at night, but you can’t stay with us. Really wish I hadn’t even told him about you. He looked, like, inspired when I told him what your mom said.”

I’m about to pipe up that it’s different, but I catch myself. A lot of the ways Clyde sucks are really funny. The way he studies and works and really, honestly tries and still only gets grades a little better than mine isn’t, though.

“Oh, but hey, happy birthday,” he says, whacking the back of my wrist for some reason. “I don’t know if you can actually, like, play, but I bought you a ten-pack of premium Kraft dinners on Terrence and Philip Online. I, uh, checked to see if I could refund them and just give you the cash, but, uh, nah.”

“That’s cool, man. Thanks.” Weirdly, I feel a little better. I guess I just needed to talk to someone who wasn’t pushing me out the door. I’m not the kind of guy who says ‘I love you’ to his friends, but I kinda hope he knows it.


	6. I CAN DO ANYTHING (WRONG)

Dare: Don’t think about things that just make me feel bad.

Most of my therapists have said that horror movies can only exacerbate my anxiety and my depression and my paranoia. There was just one who actually thought before giving her answer, which was a question: which was more frightening to me, scary monster movies or the news? She said that if worrying about Chuckie and Sam kept me from worrying about nuclear war and the world’s dwindling supply of potable water and anything else that was too hard to think about, and if that helped, then why not? I liked her. She’s the one who suggested that if I struggled to come up with goals, then maybe all I needed was a change in vernacular.

When I first started spending time with Kenny, he was passing through a phase as one of the goth kids. They took me in happily—or whatever their version of happily is—because I had “known pain,” because I smoked and drank black coffee, and most importantly, ‘cause I kind of looked like a blonde Edward Scissorhands that shrunk in the dryer. It was nice to be with people who were impressed by my encyclopedic knowledge of plagues, infections, viruses, and diseases, not to mention my theories on the all-encompassing but invisible death grip that the powers that be have on every American citizen. They taught me about music where people just scream and movies where the good guys suffer and the bad guys are the heroes. They taught me how to make my pain pretty. They taught me how to take my ugly feelings and make them into something I can hold in my hands, that I can show and share. Nobody likes my art, but I couldn’t possible care less.

In my bedroom, at my desk, I’m trying to turn Alone into something real. Alone is white. Or more like eggshell, like glossy, slippery paint over a concrete basement wall. It’s heavy. Solid. It fits in both hands. Is it smooth and round and dull, or is it sharp? It’s both, but not both at once. It switches between the two. I can’t really make that real, though. All I have is paint, hot glue, rocks, clay, and bent nails.

I close my eyes and feel my materials, fingers searching blindly across my desk. What’s the opposite of Alone? I don’t need a word. I need a shape.

Stars. Clustered together. Spanning the sky. Long white strings of light dripping between the pinpricks above down to us, tangling everyone into a cat’s cradle.

Close, but no. The opposite of alone isn’t being with everyone. It’s being part of a set of two. Inextractable. Alone is losing part of your own self. It’s my hand without his.

Whose?

There’s a real pain rising. I have just a second to make a choice, but I make the right one. Before the voice in my head can answer my question, I grab a fistful of the nails and squeeze, white-knuckled, ‘til orange-red pours out between my fingers.

I passed my dare.

Truth: I stole Big Gay Al’s reclining deck chair.

I can at least lay vertically on it, even if my stupid dangly sock monkey legs hang down into the mud. Set up at the edge of the woods to the west of town, I’m relatively sure that no one will bother (or witness) me. The dogs aren’t so bad; a good whap with a stick I found send them skittering back into the darkness. It’s the spiders that are the real problem. I always made fun of Clyde for his arachnophobia. I get it now. I understand.

It’s a good time, and I’m at a good geographical location, to be homeless. Mountain summers peak at about eighty, so that night, it’s only a little cooler than my room would usually be. I have a hard time appreciating that, though, what with sleeping in fifteen-minute snatches, grabbing for my beatin’ stick at every sound, getting a waft of the public bathrooms every time the breeze picks up. I give up on sleep as soon as the eastern horizon starts blushing blue, then spend the sunrise pulling off ticks and applying hydrocortisone to my spider bites.

I have to do some heavy strategizing. Bebe’s house is closest, but I don’t really see how getting photographed and having my pain mocked on social media is going to help. Kevin’s just next door. That kid thinks I piss sunshine and shit skittles. It kinda sicks me out. I want people to think I’m cool, but God damn. He’s straight, and dating my cousin, but I still don’t want the guy checking my ass for ticks. Next in line is Clyde. Not crazy about stripping for him, either, but I once filled a thumb drive with fat MILFs puking on cakes so his dad wouldn’t see it in his search history. He knew that would come due some day.

I don’t bother calling before I go. It’s less than a twenty minute walk, but I decide to take the car so I can charge my phone. When I pull up, though, Clyde’s in the process of locking up his front door. His eyes light up when he sees me—not in a happy way, just in a seeing-me way—and he tromps to my open window.

“Hey—gimme a ride?” He asks, a little out of breath. He’s in the same sweatpants and Jurassic Park t-shirt as yesterday. There’s little white drool stains in the corner of his mouth.

“What’s up?” Clyde behaves with the same urgency if his ghost-mom rises out of the toilet and tries to drag him to Hell as he does when Raisins brings back Zingy Dogs.

“Tweek’s first night didn’t go so good. I don’t know what happened, but he left me a weird voicemail at two last night. Kenny’s over there now, but--” He stops very briefly to scan his eyes over my face. “Dude, you don’t look so good either.”

“Glass houses, bud. Get in. Don’t sit on my backpack.”


	7. YOU BLEED JUST LIKE YOU PUKE

Dare: convince everyone that I’m fine.

The PCs live next door. I hated PC Principal’s guts back when I was a kid—something about talking about my nine-year-old not-yet-boyfriend taking a “gander” at my asshole kind of turned me off of him—but settling down really chilled him out. Still, I could do without the constant demands for affirmative consent.

When I open the door, the night air comes in. The back of my head is cold. I stand, staring at him, waiting for him to tell me why he’s here. He doesn’t intimidate me anymore. The paunch and the grey hair wiped out the last of that.

“Tweek, I am taking the liberty of making a citizen’s wellness check, alright? I have made the choice not to call the police due to the atrocious pattern of police brutality in our nation although you and I are both men of white European ancestry, which is a privilege I have thoroughly checked, alright?”

He sure is saying words.

“Tweek, do I have your affirmative consent to ask you about the screaming, and the fact that you are bleeding, without judgement toward any cultural, spiritual, or religious practices that may require ritual screaming and/or bleeding?”

I’m not super sure what he’s saying, but I know the response he wants. “Yes, you have my consent.” I feel very calm. No tweeks.

“Alright now, Tweek, why have you been screaming? Follow-up question: why are you bleeding?”

I lift my right hand to hip height. The deeper punctures haven’t closed, but the blood is all congealed and crusted over. I forget the other thing he said.

“Uh, I am referring to your head.”

I trust that he knows what he’s talking about. I don’t need to check. I let my arm fall. “I don’t know.” It’s the truth.

“Okay, Tweek, I am requesting affirmative consent to enter your house.”

“Yes, you have my consent.”

“Now with the understanding of the implication of an adult male entering a private space alone with an underage homosexual male, do I have your consent to record our interactions on my phone?”

The legal age in Colorado is seventeen, but that doesn’t really matter whatsoever here, so once again, “Yes, you have my consent.” I back up, giving him room to pass through the door, which he presses closed behind himself. He still stands like a paper doll. It’d be cool if he kept his legs together while he was just wearing boxers. Weird that he took the time to put on his wraparound Ray Bans, but not pants.

He doesn’t ask to put his hand on the crown of my head and turn it down and to the side. Once he lets go, and I look up, he’s biting his lip, showing way too much gum.

“Okay now Tweek, do I have your consent to call an ambulance, and if not, do I have your consent to transport you to the hospital?”

“What?” I try to shake my head, but it makes me dizzy, so I just glare. “No, you do not have my consent. I’m fine. I’m on my feet. That means I’m fine.”

“Tweek, I’m going to suggest—”

“I rescind my consent to have you in my home.”

That hit him where it hurts. Defeated, he nods. His hand halts on its way to grab the knob. A bloody handprint wraps around the fake brass; I think his neck actually makes a scrunching sound as it tenses. I don’t want the guy in my house, but I don’t hate him enough to make him do the social justice math required to figure out whether or not he wanted to touch my blood. I pop it open for him.

Standing on the front step, he insists on continuing to speak. “Alright Tweek, I’d like to suggest you call someone. Maybe your little boyfriend. And I give my consent to have you visit me and my family next door, should you want to. Alright?”

“Alright.”

“Alright.”

I close the door before he turns around.

My little boyfriend? The PC family and I don’t really talk. I sneak onto their wifi sometimes using the password I managed to steal by getting them to download spyware hidden in a PDF of an article on how to encourage self-gendered children to explore nonbinary identities, just to check and make sure they’re not spying on me or making any plans, but other than that, I don’t think we know anything about each other. The last time we talked…

…That’s right. Ninth grade homecoming. PC Principal doesn’t work at the high school, but he always sets up a breathalyzer station near the exits to make sure nobody gets taken advantage of afterwards. Craig and I left early, with our duffel bag with a change of clothes and a blanket and bottle of sucky wine we bought off Stan inside. We told our parents we were going to a group sleepover at Cartman’s afterwards. We changed out of our awkward little suits out by the school loading dock, into big sweaters and pajama pants and thick socks, and walked out to the church. There’s a pickup truck always parked out front. I think they use it for food deliveries and stuff. We climbed in, laying on our backs, pointing out constellations the both of us already knew, trying to pretend we were drunk. At some point, we rolled into each other. We kept our hands to ourselves that night, just touching lips: fast, loud, wet, a thousand little kisses. We kept our teeth closed. It wasn’t sexy. It didn’t turn me on at all. It just felt like…the closest possible thing to our souls touching, I guess. We only stopped when I fell asleep. I used to fall asleep so easy back then, before the nightmares. I was still walking on air, love high, stupid and daydreaming six days later—

I should call someone.

\--

Clyde doesn’t pick up. It wouldn’t be a thing with Clyde. I don’t trust anyone else to not force me to go to the hospital. It’s going to have to be a thing.

Kenny doesn’t ask a lot of questions. He never does. I let him undress me, pulling my sweatshirt up over my head, pulling off my stim bracelets. He presses his mouth to the old scars on the heels of my palm, feeling the poorly repaired seams of my skin. That day, desperate, panicked, he’d sucked at the torn-paper shreds of flesh, spitting blood and glass splinters off to the side.

He gets in the bath behind me, wrapping me into his legs, holding me in place with his tightly crossed elbows. He works with the soap and the comb in turn, softening the stiff peaks of my blood-soaked hair, then pulling them apart delicately. The bath water goes red-brown, disgusting, but he sits in the filth with me, long after my wounds are clear. I don’t really care if he kisses the nape of my neck, my shoulder, if he mouths the rim of my ear. I don’t crane my head aside to invite him deeper like I used to. He can take what he wants. He can pose me like a doll. I don’t care.

I’m less than useless. I’m a burden. I’m a problem. I’m a chore. The fucking audacity it takes me to be alive.

How could I have ever blamed Craig? I don’t want to fix me, either.


	8. YOU DON'T FUCKING LISTEN!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tweeks and my craigs got reversed...i think it's obvious but just in case: "dare" marks a switch to tweek's pov and "truth" marks a switch to craig's.

Truth: if I had any money right now, I’d probably blow it on weed.

It’s probably not appropriate to bring up the fact that I’m hungry while we’re on our way to see how badly Tweek damaged himself last night. I’m not all that worried, honestly; back in the day, I received my fair share of panicked post-midnight calls. Typically, they involved firmly asserting to Tweek that his hangnails wouldn’t go gangrenous, or that gnomes and vampires are entirely different species with entirely different predatory habits. It’s not like I know the kid all that deeply anymore, but he hasn’t died yet, so I imagine he must have figured out some kind of coping skills.

It feels kinda weird to pull into his house from the perspective of the driver’s seat. I used to spring out from the passenger’s side before the car even stopped, yelling some kind of bye or thanks to whichever parent drove me, and then bust my way through the front door, where Tweek would be waiting to throw his arms around my neck and plant a big smooch on my cheek. We were so obnoxiously saccharine back then.

Clyde has a little hitch in his getalong when he walks up to the door. It makes his butt wobble in his sweatpants. Some people just hold their weight wrong, but chubby works on Clyde. Not that that’s going to prevent me from bullying him for it. He’s already rung the doorbell by the time I catch up at a saunter.

Kenny answers the door. His eyes hit Clyde first, then flick up to me with the briefest of squints. If Kenny had any money, I’d think he wears colored contacts. Everything about him is just so…American pop punk. In another universe, we might have had something; I don’t know if he actually dates boys, but it’s not exactly a small-town secret that he goes both ways. He kind of pisses me off, but everyone kind of pisses me off.

Inside, Tweek’s burrito’d up in an ugly woven blanket on the couch. I’m not sure what’s on the TV, but it’s dark and someone’s screaming. Tweek does the same as Kenny: eyes to Clyde, then to me.

“He gave me a ride.” Clyde explains quickly. I can hear him struggling to not sound out of breath. “Dude, are you good?”

Tweek tightens his blanket under his chin. He looks like a Babushka, which as far as I know is someone with a blanket over their head. “Yeah, I’m alright. Sorry for bothering you last night.”

“Nah, man, it’s fine.”

Kenny squishes himself up against Tweek’s hip. They’re bottombuddies. (I think Kenny’s a bottom? Actually I’m not sure now that I think about it. Can bi dudes be bottoms? I didn’t choose the gay; the gay was thrust upon me. I don’t have this innate knowledge everyone else seems to have been born with.) There’s a little room to fit my narrow ass in on the other side of Clyde. It feels kinda weird to just sit without being invited, but being the only one standing is weird, too. I compromise by perching awkwardly on the clawed-up arm of the couch. The Tweaks have never had a cat as far as I know.

“You can—uh—hang out if you want, but really, I’m—” In the process of drifting casually over the room, Tweek’s eyes light on me. They narrow very slightly, just for a moment. He sees me seeing him see me. Then he snaps his head back to Craig. “I’m fine. I’ve got Kenny here. We were just gonna watch movies and—ech—whatever.”

Clyde looks almost a little put-out that he missed his chance to play hero. He doesn’t get many opportunities, I guess. “Oh. Uh, yeah, I guess I don’t have anything going on until I go in at three.” Clyde works register part-time at his dad’s store.

Huh.

“Uh, Craig, you can uh, stay too, if you want, I guess.” Tweek very graciously adds on, avoiding eye contact. It is clearly intended as a very polite “get the fuck out of my house”, but I’m not about to pass up the opportunity to sit on furniture. The medicine cabinet’s gotta be a gold mine of ointments. I’ll steal. I don’t give a shit.

It’s too awkward to actually accept, so instead, I ask, “What are you watching?”

“House of Wax.” Kenny provides with a smile. “Paris Hilton gets her brain impaled on a metal pipe. Bitch got no ass but so what? Everyone looks good on the inside.”

“Who’s Paris Hilton?” Clyde asks.

“Paris Hilton, the hotel guy’s daughter. She had that store in tow—oh, uh, nevermind.”

“Whose daughter?” Tweek asks.

“Forget it.” Kenny shakes his head hard, looking a little irritated. He’s always saying weird shit and then getting annoyed when nobody knows what the Hell he’s talking about. I think the guy’s huffed too many cat asses.

Tweek keeps adjusting, clearly uncomfortable. It’s way too hot to be all wrapped up in that blanket like that. Every now and then, I think I see him looking at me out of the corner of my eye, but when I try to catch him, he’s dead centered on the TV. Maybe he’s thinking of how to tell me to get out. If I’m about to get kicked out, there one thing I need to do.

“I’m gonna take a shit.” I announce to the room, and then stand and ascend the stairs to do just that.

Dare: stop self harming.

I try to watch the movie. My brain can’t click onto it, though. I’ve seen it a thousand times. The twist sucked, even the first time through. The body horror is just gorgeous, though. I try to focus on that, at least, but everything is just colors and shapes.

I don’t have an excuse for going upstairs. I just stand and go without announcing it. I’m sure I look like a weird-ass with my blanket up over my head, but I don’t wanna show anyone the back of my head until I can check it out myself.

Craig really is in the bathroom. Not that I thought he wouldn’t be, really. I don’t know. I don’t know him all that well anymore. I don’t know if I want to. I’m not sure if we could ever, ever, ever be friends. Maybe if we both had a major brain injury that wiped out all of our memories of each other.

I’m not really feeling all that friendly, per se. Just human. And maybe a little eager to be of use to somebody.

I hear the sound of him washing his hands. Good. I’ve been a little paranoid about that ever since I heard this rumor about Clyde. When he walks out, he’s turned to face the light switch as he shuts it off; when he does move his head forward, he jumps so hard you’d think he’s me.

“Oh shit—uh,” he’s blinking weird. I don’t think I caught him doing anything bad, but if I did, I kind of don’t want to know about it.

“Did you find a place to stay?” I ask. He doesn’t look like he did. There’s a dead cranefly stuck to his hat.

“N--…kinda? I’m camping out over by the woods.”

“Bend over.”  
“Hm?” He very politely turns his head to the side to give my voice a clearer passage to his ear. Impatient, I just grab onto the hangy braid things on either side of his chullo and drag his head down to my level. I wish he wouldn’t look into my eyes right now. I stay focused on his forehead, pressing the back of my hand under his short bangs.

“You’re hot. Do you still get summer colds?”

“Uh.” His breath hits my face, and I remember to let go of him. I don’t need to smell that again. “Yeah, I guess?”

“Do you have any other symptoms?”

“Uh.”

“Headache? Sore throat?”

“I mean I slept in the woods last night so yeah, kinda.”

I nod, like I’m thinking about something. I’m not. I’m sick of thinking. “Okay, go into the bathroom closet. There’s towels and there should be a new pack of toothbrushes. Take a shower—a good one, I mean it—and brush your teeth, and then you can lay down in my bed for a while. Seriously, though, don’t get outdoors on my bed. Agh, you know what? Put your dirty clothes in the bathtub when you’re done so I can check for fleas. Wear something of mine. Most of the clothes on the ground are clean. Just sniff test them.”

“Uh.”

“What?” I can only chase off my common sense for so long. I don’t think he realizes how quickly his window of opportunity is closing.

“Uh. Thanks. Thank you. You don’t have to—”

“I don’t have to do shit, man. I just don’t want you spreading a new mutant giant guy super virus through the town.” I wish I had something harsher to make fun of him for than his height. I wish he didn’t have stubble. I don’t have any stubble. Fucker. “Go shower. You stink.”

I leave before he can say anything else, plunking back down the stairs, back between Kenny and Clyde. The movie’s almost over. The house of wax is melting. Kenny slides his palm over my thigh, just resting it there. I wish he wouldn’t do that in front of people. Clyde doesn’t spread gossip about his friends, but he’s pretty dumb. I don’t need the town talking about us. Everybody in this God damn town talks too much. Especially me.

Fucking. Shit. My thoughts are catching up.

If I wanted to make myself useful to someone, why didn’t I just let Kenny bend me over last night?

I definitely failed my dare.


	9. I CAN'T SEEM TO CHANGE MY ATTITUDE, BUT I CAN CHANGE MY SHIRT

Truth: I’ve only ever had sex with one person.

People are…attracted to me. Don’t ask me why. I feel like everything about me is too big. My nose is too big for my jaw. My jaw is too big for my neck. My neck is too big for my shoulders. My shoulders are too big for my nose. My nose is too big for my jaw. Being 6’4 really impresses people for some really. To me, I just look like some kind of cryptid in ill-fitting supermarket clothes. I’m not really swaggering. It just takes time and effort to move all of me. If I were athletic or something, I might understand, but I’m not. All I can do is fight, and I don’t even do that.

Girls from the internet and from other schools try to flirt with me sometimes. Even if I was straight, almost every one of them would be out of my league. Internet guys just ask to see my feet. It doesn’t feel real when other people tell me I’m hot or whatever. It doesn’t count. They’re just mistaken. Really, I think I must have tricked them somehow by accident. I know that sounds crazy.

Showering feels God damn orgasmic. Tweek’s family has much nicer shampoo and stuff than mine; the shampoo actually has an intentional scent. There’s soap. You don’t even have to use the leftover lather from your hair to wash your pits ‘n’ tits. And the drain drains like no drain has ever drained before. The Tuckers are a…hirsute family.

The inside of my mouth feels super hot. I guess it’s all the bacteria having an orgy or something. After brushing my teeth, I realize how thirsty I am, and I chug water out of my cupped hands like it’s some kind of religious experience. Nothing I can really do about my stubble. Stubble isn’t so bad. Actual facial hair is just awful.

Now that my outsides are all sparkling clean, the contrast really makes me realize how much my insides feel like broiling sewage. I probably would never had realized I was sick on my own; I was sort of just figuring that that’s what being homeless feels like. My summer colds are never that bad, anyway. Nothing compares to my seasonal allergies.

It bums me out to leave my hat in the tub along with my shirt, jeans, socks, and underwear (which I do my best to ball up securely in the leg of said jeans.) I kind of wish he’d just let me use his washing machine on my own—I’m kinda weird about laundry—but I’m not really in a position to make requests.

Seeing his room again feels kind of like seeing your mom with a new haircut. New posters falling off the walls, new clothes on the floor, a few new dents and holes in the walls, but the same personality. The same feeling like you’re in a smaller space than the walls contain, but more like a snuggle than a cage. Same north-facing window, so there’s never really any sun, so it always kind of feels like you’re looking through your eyelids.

It isn’t really hard to find clothes on the floor. Everything’s everywhere, so you never have to look too far. Tweek wears his clothes pretty baggy. I know that feeling restrained by his clothes against his skin makes him climb the walls. What’s actually hard is finding something I can actually fit over my skull.

That kid is fucking tiny.

The only thing I can get to stretch over my gibbon limbs is a pair of cotton gym shorts with the elastic blown out. It takes some wiggling and stumbling and figuring, but I finally manage to wrench them over my Touchdown Jesus-shaped pelvis.

Hm.

They fit in the sense that like, my body is inside of them. For the most part. Adjusting my junk through a vacuum seal is…challenging. I tug them down just enough to shuffle things around, but if anything, this second arrangement is worse.

Here’s another thing everyone thinks is so cool and great, though I’m sure they wouldn’t if they had to deal with it. Being big would be one thing, but being a freak like me is just like, a medical problem. Not to mention how difficult it is to actually fit into anyone. Or at least, how hard it was to fit into Anna.

Dare: set clear boundaries with Craig.

“You sure you’re good with him staying?” Kenny asks again. He doesn’t sound like he wants to talk me out of it. He just wants to me be sure, which I am not.

“I’m sure,” I nod. “It’ll be good. It’ll be another body in the house, but he’s not gonna baby me. Like _someone_ would.”

Kenny smiles, not the least bit sorry. “Tweety baby, you know you’d have to fumigate the place to get me out if not for Karen.”

“Good. Urgh, I mean, good that you’re staying with Karen. Don’t ever choose me over Karen. Promise.” I would die for Karen. I’d die for a lot of reasons, but dying for Karen would be one of my favorite ways to die. “You and Craig are friends, right? Do you not trust him?”

“Naw, Craig’s a pussy, not a threat. I just now you two are…not…weird, but—”

“Just reminding you guys I’m here,” Clyde speaks up for the first time since I came downstairs. “Craig’s best friend. Though to be fair he’s not mine. I mean he and Token are tied. Or like. I have more fun with Craig but I _like_ Token better? He’s just really cool. And nice. Craig’s a dick. Actually, forget it, talk all the shit you want.”

Kenny and I look over to where he’s sitting on the couch. Then we look back to one another.

“I’ll kick him out any time I feel like it. Urgh, really. I’m not fifteen anymore.” When I try to give him an encouraging smile, I see that he’s frowning tightly.

-

I don’t know how many people I’ve had sex with.

Kenny and I used to do it a lot. It felt like a lot. It was something to do. It felt good. It felt _really_ good. I measured his dick myself: five and a half inches. Not small. Definitely not big. He knew how to use it, and his mouth, and his fingers, and everything else. I never really wanted any more when we were together. I don’t fantasize about having wine bottles shoved up my ass or anything.

Craig’s been asleep for about nine hours now. I don’t really care how much he sleeps; I just want my room back. I haven’t been able to write down my dares. I don’t always write them down, especially if I fail, but I do like to see the list get longer and longer. Plus, I wanna wreck Alone. It got blood on it. It’d be cool to use blood in my art, but there’s no blood in Alone.

I’m not trying to be all that quiet, but he doesn’t wake up when I come in. I can see that he’s sprawled low down on the mattress, spread eagle, his legs hanging off the end. His feet are fucking massive. Knuckley monkey toes. My toes look like jellybeans, which sounds cute but is actually just disturbing. Waking him up by saying his name feels like it would be weirdly intimate. I opt to just turn the lights on instead.

His eyelids don’t even twitch when the light hits him.

There’s no rush.

He’s filled out a lot since the last time I saw him shirtless. Every part of him used to look disconnected, but now everything flows so smoothly. Collarbones to shoulders, broad like wings. You can see where his biceps end and where his triceps begin. He’s not built, or even what I’d really call muscular. He’s just very…man-shaped. He has body hair. A little between his pecs, and then kind of a thicker tornado-shape that points up to his belly button, disappearing down into his sh—

“Oh Jesus,” I hiss through my teeth.

He’s…out.

I’m not a size queen, but you don’t have to be a marine biologist to be impressed by a blue whale. I thought maybe he was hard, and just being held in place by the tight fabric, but no, he’s completely soft. I inch closer, somewhere between disgusted and enchanted. This is not the dick I clumsily lapped at three years ago. This is a stranger.

I wish he’d had that back then. I don’t really know if I like it or not, but from a strictly medical viewpoint, I have so many questions.

He hasn’t woken up. I sort of want to do an elbow drop on his face. Somebody needs to balance out his karma. The only thing he deserves less than having that thing is having an audience. Very carefully, I lift the blanket he’s kicked off. When I place it overtop of him, he moans softly and makes a weird sucking noise inside of his mouth, but doesn’t wake up. I tiptoe back to the door, shut off the lights, turn them back on, and shout, “WAKE UP, FUCKER!”

That does the job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh i dont know how well-known touchdown jesus is outside of the area where i live. i wanted to come up with something more universal but. my heart said touchdown jesus.


	10. THOUGH I'VE PICKED THE THORNY PATH MYSELF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is just a bunch of headcannons in a trench coat

Truth: people think I’m cool and mysterious because I’m quiet and I mind my business. I’m just too boring to come up with anything to say.

I got Tweek to go out to my car and grab me a change of my own clothes so that I didn't have to keep rocking out with my cocking out. My plan is to stay until Tweek says the actual word “leave.” I know I’m gonna be begging for a place to hang out a lot for the foreseeable future, and I’m not about to squander this opportunity to be out from under the sun just because of a little awkwardness.

Tweek and I sit and watch Paranormal Activity 2 and 3. He doesn’t feel the need to discuss with me why he chose to skip the first one, which I’ve never seen. He keeps his phone active in his hand, tapping it to keep it awake, lifting it to text rapidly for a few seconds, and then lowering it to his hip again.

I know most of our friends—his friends and my friends—are busy during the days now. Clyde and Kenny work. Token works too, just to be a dick. Ripping on him for being a rich spoiled kid was the only thing we had on him. He’s doing the same post-secondary thing I’m planning on doing, where he takes college courses early. I don’t know if he has summer classes, though. I don’t spend a lot of time with Stan and Kyle. There was absolutely nothing like a civil war when Tweek and I broke up, but when you’ve gotten accustomed to hanging out within a carefully balanced group, it’s just science that some people will tip to one side versus the other. I took Token and Jimmy. I definitely came out on top of that deal. It’s hard to keep track of which fires Kyle has his irons in at any given time. Stan works as a counselor at a sports camp at the YMCA. Jimmy and Timmy are working as camp counselors, too, but at a sleepaway camp. Cartman and Butters are up in Denver, doing whatever it is they do. I don’t like thinking about Cartman. It kinda makes me feel…nihilistic. I don’t know if Tweek still hangs out with the goth kids. The little one’s just going into ninth grade, so he probably doesn’t have a job or anything. Unless he’s texting someone while they’re at work, it’s either him, or Bebe, who very proudly claims to be in training to be a trophy wife for Wendy, who’s been a full-time student up at Colorado State since sophomore year.

I have absolutely nothing going on. No job. No relationship. Too unmotivated to pay attention to any of my hobbies. Stealing perfectly nice gay men’s lawn chairs. Maybe this is my kick in the pants.

Just to get out of my head, I pipe up. As soon as my mouth opens, Tweek’s glaring, but I persist. “Since when have you been so into horror movies?”

“Ninth grade.”

Ah. That seems kind of obvious in retrospect. I walked right into that. I can try to redirect, though: “When you started hanging out with the goth kids?”

“Yeah.” He sends a quick text, chews his lip, and then adds on, “Henrietta had HBO Max, and Michael and Firkle had Netflix, and Kenny and Pete didn’t have anything, so they’d come over here and binge all the horror movies on Hulu. It was cool.”

“I like all your posters and figures and shit. I don’t even know what half those movies are.” I try to laugh, but just make a dry wheezing sound.

“Mm.” Another text. He turns his gaze back up to the TV, but I watch his eyes for a second. They’re not tracking any of the movements on the screen.

It would be weird to ask him to feed me. I don’t want to do anything to give him incentive to kick me out. If he eats, it’ll be easy for me to just kind of shove myself up against his plate. I just have to wait him out.

“A lot of SF movies are kinda horror movies…like, there’s a lot of overlap. Like Alien and Signs and…,” there are so many more, but my brain is being a fucking traitor dick, “y’know.”

“Yeah, uh, Alien’s really good.”

“Yeah.” There’s a clock ticking somewhere, but I don’t see it. Twelve ticks. “Signs sucked, though.”

“Uh…I know I watched it, auchk—but I don’t really remember anything about it.” He peeks at his phone. Apparently there are no notifications, because he drops it right off.

“That’s good, ‘cause it sucked.” Without looking at me, he gives one of those straight-lipped smiles that very clearly communicate that he’s not having a good time. “There’s anime, too. Parasyte is really good.”

“I don’t watch anime.” I detect a hint of superiority in his tone. He’s right to think not watching anime makes him better than me, but he doesn’t have to be so obvious about it.

I click my tongue. I hate when people do that. He twitches hard with a grunt, which makes me look over at him. He hates when people react to his tweeks. He picks up his phone, and I notice for the first time that his left hand is wrapped in those stretchy cloth bandages. It looks like he’s having a hard time using that thumb.

I see him see me seeing him. I try to watch the movie. Nothing’s happening.

-

Dare: do some stealth reconnaissance.

Pepe LePubes: ooo secret server just for sexy people

Pepe LePubes: just for sexy blonds. blond squond

Your Mom: This is just the Babybird Protection League without Clyde

Your Mom: Not that I’m complaining

TWEETY: I JUST FEWL WEIRD ASKIG CLYDE AB OUT THIS

Pepe LePubes: bebe why are you so emotionally abusive

Your Mom: Cause I don’t like him

Pepe LePubes: why bang. like if he were hot id get it but yknow

TWEETY: GUYS

Your Mom: No bang. I want to be VERY clear about that. I just like using his face as a hippity hop.

Pepe LePubes: bebe i love you

Your Mom: As a lesbian this is super hard to admit and if you screenshot this I will cut your dick off using my fingernails alone but if anyone was put on this earth only to snack on puss it’s him. Ask any girl he’s dated.

Your Mom: Oh, and you didn’t hear this from me, but you can ask Cartman’s mom, too

TWEETY: I HAD ANY ACTUAL WUESTION

TWEETY: *AN

Pepe LePubes: i think you can ask cartman’s mom about anyone in town

Your Mom: ...

Your Mom: Tweek baby smoochy pie darling baby bird, what did you need help with my shining star?

TWEETY: I GUESS ITS MORE JUST A QUESTKON FOR KENNY

TWEETY: BUIT I NEEC YOU DTO BE MY BULSSHIT RAEEF CUZ KENNYS A LIAR

TWEETY: *RADAR

Pepe LePubes: youre not wrong

TWEETY: WHATS THE BIGGEAT THING YOUVE EBE R HAD IN YOURNASS

Your Mom: LMFAO TWEEK WTH

Pepe LePubes: that sounds like a queston with a simple answer but it is not

Pepe LePubes: does it count if it killed me

TWEETY: NO

Your Mom: Yes

Pepe LePubes: mt elbert

TWEETY: KENNY

Pepe LePubes: lemme think

Your Mom: Tweety babe, just fyi, that was bullshit just now.

TWEETY: IHQ34FIJNUFID I KNOW!!!!

Pepe LePubes: okay i think it was a fire exstinguisher

Pepe LePubes: eqstinguisher

Your Mom: My bullshit radar is quiet.

Pepe LePubes: but not one of those little kitchen ones. the ones they have on the walls in schools n stuff.

Your Mom: beep beep beep motherfucker

TWEETY: BEBE AHVE YOU EVER SEEN KENYS ASSHOEL

Your Mom: Don’t think I’ve had the displeasure.

Pepe LePubes: u wish roastie ho

TWEETY: IM INCLEINE TO BALEIEV HIM

TWEETY: *INCLINED *BELIEVE

TWEETY: `SORYY CRAIG TYRING TO TALEK TO ME

TWEETY: OH GDO THIS IS YOO MCUHB PFESSURE!!!!!

Pepe LePubes: hey baby you a golden girl? cuz youre lookin to me like sweaty white

Your Mom: Estelle Sweaty

Pepe LePubes: fuck you bebe

Your Mom: Why do you know the Golden Girls actresses’ names?

Pepe LePubes: uh cuz gg fucks. next question.

Your Mom: What’s the biggest dick you’ve had?

Your Mom: Human only.

TWEETY: YEHA I WAS ONANA ASK THAT TOO’’

TWEETY: *YEEHAW

Pepe LePubes: oh this ones easy

Pepe LePubes: stan and kyle took me up to this club in north park for my fifth sixteenth birthday

Pepe LePubes: you guys know spontaneous bootay?

TWEETY: NO

Your Mom: Is that the name of the club?

Pepe LePubes: nah its the fruity toucan

Pepe LePubes: well it was her sister. she said she was 11in

TWEETY: SISYTER???

Your Mom: Some people are trans, baby bird.

TWEETY: OH WHOSP I FORGOT

TWEETY: OH SJESU DOES HTAT AMKE ME TRBAMSPHOBIC???

TWEETY: I ONT WANNA BE TRANSPHOBIC

Pepe LePubes: get his ass

Your Mom: I don’t think you’re transphobic but I’m cis so ???

Pepe LePubes: who has stans brothers number

TWEETY: IJWEFUIH32E DONT HELL KILL EM!!!

Your Mom: Why are you asking about slutpuppy’s superlative anal play moments?

TWEETY: INUHUH HE SLOOKIGN AT ME

TWEETY: WHAT D0OES HE WANT

Pepe LePubes: probably your spare change

TWEETY: I GOTTA GO

Pepe LePubes: guess its just you n me now beb

Pepe LePubes: did you fuck cartman’s mom

Pepe LePubes: bebe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing IMs is super fun but doing tweek's shitty panic typing gave me a headache


	11. 'CAUSE I LURK IN YOUR BED

Dare: stop thinking about it.

“Ugh—I’m gonna go for a smoke,” I announce, clapping my hands to my thighs. I don’t usually bother going outside to smoke; the “rule” is I have to do it outside or out of my bedroom window, but there’s also a rule about not giving your toddler amphetamines, so I think we’re pretty much square on that.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Craig comments. I don’t sense any kind of tone, but that doesn’t stop me from being irritated by the one I make up.

“Not a lot. Just when I’m stressed or mad.” I don’t normally think quick enough to be clever like that. I’ve earned my cigarette. I have to go upstairs to get my pack, but I just want to be outside for a minute.

I hate summer. I really hate summer. I get drenched in sweat just from thinking too hard. I don’t need the sun and the humid and the grass. People always fuss over the fact that I don’t wear a coat ever. I own coats. I just don’t prefer experiencing the entire water cycle under my pits. I know I don’t smell pleasant. I’ve made my peace with that.

If a migraine were a sound, it would be trilling cicadas. I regret coming outside, but going back in without finishing would be an admission of defeat. I don’t really know what kind of message I’m trying to send Craig. Maybe that I’m doing him this one favor, but that doesn’t mean I like him? I don’t really dislike him exactly. I don’t know him enough anymore to know whether I like or dislike him. I don’t want to like him. Maybe I do. It might make me less mad. Or maybe it’ll just make me madder. I don’t know.

How big is eleven inches anyway?

I don’t want to be outside, but I don’t want to be inside, so I shove the butt down into a dead potted plant and take out another. I light it up with my mini torch. I got started on those back when I was on the pipe. It looks like overkill, but they don’t give me those gross thumb calluses the Bics do.

I guess I haven’t actually told him I’m letting him stay. I haven’t really committed to anything. I don’t want him to know that I need someone to babysit me. I wish I didn’t know that, either. It’s not like I need someone making me eat and bathe and poop on the potty. Just having another human nearby keeps me...stuck in reality, I guess. The echo chamber inside my head is warped. Things bounce back wrong.

He has a car. That’s cool. I don’t know if I can afford to feed us. Sometimes I don’t feel like eating for a week straight, and sometimes I shovel in food so fast and hard I can’t even taste it. It’s hard to keep track of my meds, especially with all the self-prescribing I have to do to get through any given day. Side effects are kind of a crapshoot.

He’s awfully big, though. He must eat a lot. He wasn’t that big when we were dating. I mean, obviously he wasn’t as tall, but he didn’t tower over me like he does now. If I stood on my tiptoes, and he bent down, we were able to kiss standing up. Now I feel like we’d need some kind of gymnastic apparatus to manage that. We’d look really stupid together, like if we were holding hands or something. We used to do that all day every day. His hands are so big now. I don’t know if I’d be able to hold his back. He’s just too big and I’m just too small.

I hold my cigarette in my lips and spread my hands, palms in, trying to visualize a ruler between them. Turning my invisible ruler ninety degrees, I hold one hand at the base of my pelvis. The other hand hits past my ribs.

Not happening. Not that it was ever happening. But in this hypothetical within this hypothetical, it wasn’t happening. Like if pegasuses were real, they’d be too heavy to actually fly. That kind of hypothetical.

I light a third cigarette.

Truth: when I was a kid, I thought I’d be an astronaut by now.

Tweek comes back in, looking very moist, just as I’m hanging up the phone. He certainly doesn’t ask, but I feel like it might do something to improve his clearly grave-deep opinion on me, so I inform him, “I got a job.”

“Huh.” I think his eyebrows actually lift up. That’s been my greatest success yet.

“Clyde’s dad’s gonna give me a few shifts a week.” It’s super lame that I had to beg a retail job off of my best friend’s dad, but it’s somewhat less lame than scavenging berries and acorns in the woods to survive.

“Yeah?” Tweek asks. I think he’s trying to sound lofty, but he’s not really pulling it off. “Are you, uh, gonna make enough money to like—um—find a place to stay?”

“Pft, no. But I can at least pay someone rent for their couch or something. Buy food, hopefully. I haven’t eaten in like, thirty-six hours.” Careful not to turn my head, I flick my eyes over to him.

He nods, kind of pensively. He’s working up to saying something. Everybody makes that face. I don’t know why he would be thinking so hard about offering me a bowl of cereal, but a man can dream. “My parents left me four hundred for the summer. I wasn’t really sure if I that was...I don’t really know how much things...cost.”

“Yeah, guess I don’t either.” These past few days have been humbling, to say the least.

“So...,” he offers, like we’re playing a guessing game and he’s already given me all the hints.

It sounds like he’s inviting me to stay, but just a few days ago he wasn’t all that subtle in suggesting that he’d prefer I curl up and die somewhere. I choose to play it safe by looking dumb.

“I-if you wanted to like...stay here, I guess...ugh...it’d probably make things easier if just for a little bit, we split expenses...not like, completely, just for toilet paper and stuff like that....”

“Oh.” Oh. “Oh. Uh, yeah, that would be...great. Really.”

“Just ‘cause I have the room to spare, and—and you’ve got a car, plus it’s just...safer, I guess, to...it’s safer.” His eyes are darting around like he’s admitting to a murder.

“Right.” I guess the idea that I would be sleeping on a lawn chair all summer never really sank in, because this news is hitting me very gently. It feels like an eventuality being fulfilled. I don’t know why. Maybe I just spent so much time here when I was little, I’ll always feel like I’m gonna return sooner or later. I won’t. I need to force myself to understand that. Just not right now.

“I’ll use my first paycheck to get groceries, ‘kay?”

“Uh, sounds good.”

“Neat.” And I half-jog to the kitchen to clear it out.


	12. THE METAPHOR WILL SUFFICE FOR NOW

Dare: keep my thoughts on facts, not on feelings.

I figure trying to match my eating schedule with Craig is probably a good way to keep me behaving like a human. Neither one of us is much for cooking—baking isn’t cooking—but Craig stirs up some lumpy pancake batter from a box mix, then folds in some chocolate chips. I appreciate that if I had been the one doing the mixing, the kitchen would look like a scene from Scarface by now. The melted chocolate throws off the consistency, and we end up with a big pile of wet pancake crumbs, but I don’t care. It tastes good.

I don’t know where Craig’s sleep schedule is at, but I want to put him away somewhere so I can get some weird-kid time to mutter aloud to the voices in my head. Just after it starts to get dark, I stand in what I hope looks like a meaningful fashion, and ask, “Do you have blankets and stuff in your car?”

Craig looks confused for just a second. He’s been really expressive these past couple days. He always used to be so unreadable, except for some secret times, when he’d smile and it would hit his eyes and make them kinda squinty. He had a different smile for Stripe. I was glad that Craig loved Stripe, but I was also glad that I got my very own personal smile. Oh shit he was talking.

“What?”

“Uh, I said I do, but I slept with it outside last night, so I don’t know if you wanna...debug them.”

“Oh. Yeah—uh—don’t bring anything you had outside inside until I can check. I should have checked you before I let you in.”

“Oh, speaking of which—could I get you to check my back for ticks? I had some on me when I woke up this morning but I can’t check my back. I don’t know how long they stay on for, though. Uh. Sorry if I brought anything in.”

I do my best to subdue a disgusted shudder. I don’t particularly care whether my blood is on the inside or the outside of my body, but the idea of having it stolen sicks me out hard. Plus people say if you pull them off wrong then the head stays on and—

Unhelpful thoughts. “Yeah, sure. Let me get your scalp.”

He turns his head as best he can while still sitting on the couch. I have to get up on my knees to get at the right angle to look at his scalp. His hair is dark, but it’s not particularly thick, so it’s easy to comb through with my fingers. Scalps always look weird. Too milk-white. His hair feels nice, though. A lot of people think he wears the same hat every day, but he actually has a few. His grandma knits them. If you know to look for them, you can see the differences. His favorite color is actually yellow, not blue, but he thinks a yellow hat would look stupid. Blue suits him. He’s got a dark complexion, for a white guy. Much darker than the rest of his family. Maybe it’s just because I expect it to, but his skin always feels a little warmer than everyone else’s. I don’t like sun heat but body heat is different.

His head is clear. So’s his neck. Without standing, he pulls his shirt up over his head. I watch his muscles and bones stretch in his arms and shoulders, the way they slide silently alongside each other. Everyone has muscles and shoulder blades. It’s not just Craig.

His back is long. His shoulders are really wide, but his waist is so tight. He has hair on his chest and belly, but not on his back. It’s just smooth. A little paler than his face and arms, but still dark. I can’t think of a color to compare it to. It’s colored like the smell of pumpkin bread. Like September. Not summer and not fall, but somewhere between them.

I remember the dark mole on his lower back. More than seeing it, I remember the way it felt on my hands as they fumbled under his clothes, flat and open to increase the surface area so I could touch just that little bit more of him. It’s raised, just a little. I know it’s not a tick, but I make sure by running my fingers over it.

Craig shudders, goosebumps rising on the back of his arms. “That’s tickly,” he almost laughs, making me realize that any tenderness or intimacy in this moment is entirely one-sided.

Why is he doing this to me? Hasn’t he done enough?

I banish that thought from my head, thrusting my closed fists back into my lap. “You’re good. Okay. You can just use the throw blanket tonight. I’m gonna head upstairs.”

And I do.

Truth: I think I have some kind of creepy parasite-checking kink.

That’s how Anna and I met, though it was leeches. I met her on a lame family camping trip, between freshman and sophomore year. She asked me to check her over. We talked. It was only for a few hours, but it only took a few hours for me to fall so intensely in love I could barely close my jaw. We had nothing at all in common, but I wanted to know everything about her, and I still believe she really did want to know everything about me. Just as the sun was going down, she asked me if I wanted to have sex, just as casual as if she’d asked if I wanted to get a snack. I don’t know if it was just false bravado or if she genuinely underestimated how intense sex was. She cried and shook and whimpered but she refused to unwrap her hands from my forearms, perforating my skin with her nails. I thought she would hate me after, but she held onto me and put her head on my chest and talked about the pain as if it were ours. We tried it eight more times that week, with inconsistent success. Her panties were all spotted with blood. She always instigated, and then she’d cringe and writhe and gasp with pain but command me not to stop. We never actually saw each other naked.

It’s not the kind of love story you tell your kids about or anything, but I really did love her. We exchanged numbers, but we never called one another. I’m kind of glad. I want us to love each other forever. Being together would ruin that.

Now, tracking the sound of Tweek’s footsteps overhead, I’m thinking about ticks and leeches and getting a little wired. I’m not gonna do anything, but it would be nice to sprawl back on the couch and play out checking Tweek over for creepy crawlies on the back of my eyelids.

He’d be nervous, eager for my help, plea—

When I lie down, my head hangs over the arm, and my legs hang down off the other. I’m curled up like a shrimp. I bump my butt down so that my head is leaning on the arm instead, but then the other one hits me about mid-thigh, making my legs stick out like a mummy. Curling my knees up to my chest is no good. I test out just sitting upright with my head lolled back, but there’s no way I could sleep like that.

I miss Big Gay Al’s lawn chair. I can’t believe I left it out there, cold and alone.

Sleeping on the floor doesn’t bother me much. I just need one more tortilla to make myself a comfy Craig quesadilla. I haul the god damn megalith that is my constant inconvenience of a body up onto my feet, and then trod upstairs.

The hallway’s dark. I guide myself by the light coming out from under his closed door. When I knock, he yelps, but then calls a strained, “C-come in!”

He’s just sitting on his bed with his knees curled up to his chin. I wish I could roll up like a little pill bug like that. I wish I was dead. “I’m gonna get myself set up on the floor. D’you have something I can use as a futon?”

He narrows his enormous pond-colored eyes. “We don’t have a futon. It’s just a couch.”

“No, I mean like, something I can put down so I don’t just have to lie directly on the carpet. The couch is too small for me to lie down on so I’m gonna sleep on the floor.”

“Oh. Ech. Uh. Don’t sleep on the floor. It’s...it’s weird.”

“So where should I sleep?”

“Uh.” He looks to one of the posters on his wall. I’m not sure if they’re communicating. “You could sleep in my parents’ bed...I guess...but....”

“Yeah....” Other people’s parents are...I don’t know. I feel like I’d be thinking about Tweek’s parents having sex the whole time. I don’t feel that way about my parents’ bed, but—I’m dangerously close to thinking about my parents having sex and that just cannot happen.

“You can sleep in my bed for tonight,” he shrugs, already crawling off the edge.

“I don’t wanna take your bed, though.”

He shakes his head. Some of his dandelion hair falls into his eyes, and he wipes it to the side. “I sleep on the couch sometimes. I don’t care.”

“Oh yeah.” Maybe I shouldn’t, but I let a big grin split my face. “You were always falling asleep when we watched movies and whatever down there. And then I’d be trapped, ‘cause you’d be leaning on my shoulder, so I couldn’t get up to pee or anything without waking you up.”

His hand pauses on the doorframe. He stares at me, mouth still, eyes cold. “I don’t sleep like that anymore. I haven’t in a long time.” The meaning is clear.

I want him to stop walking away. I want to tell him that I don’t think I’ve done anything but sleep since then. I want him to know that we’re both fucked up. I want to talk about it. But I don’t stop him. I just listen as his feet tap down the hall, down the stairs.


	13. YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BODY BAG

Dare: have an actual conversation with Craig.

I actually end up sleeping for a while. It takes a couple hours of taking a pill, waiting fifteen minutes, taking another, until I started to feel that fuzzy-brain sleepy tingle. I leave Unsolved Mysteries on to keep me out of my head, but I’ve seen them all before. It’s just muzak at this point.

It wasn’t Craig’s fault. Not one part of it. He used to worry about me crossing the tracks on my own. He’d tell me to wait so we could go together, or he’d tell me to get Kenny and at least have him with me while I was in the shed. I thought he was naive. I thought he was too dumb with love to recognize that I was one of them. That was so stupid of me. I thought I didn’t have any farther to fall. I was so fucking stupid.

Still, I see him, and I see that fifteen year old standing in my driveway. I hear him say, “Okay.”

I hear the phone not ringing.

I jolt awake, suddenly shocked by the silence.

It takes a minute of breathing and centering to realize that there’s nothing wrong. There’s blue light at the windows. I actually slept through the darkness. Not bad. I think I actually slept long enough to have more than one dream. The most recent...something about teeth again. I don’t want to dig any deeper than that. The first one was about being at school, but not knowing where my locker was or what my combination was or where my classes were or what my schedule even was, and then my ankles went all floppy and I had to drag myself through the school, totally lost, while everyone else knew what they were doing and just stepped over and around me.

Altogether, one of the better dreams I’ve had.

In the kitchen, I finish off yesterday’s coffee, drinking it cold straight from the carafe. I hate the taste of coffee. I really do. My parents don’t use meth anymore, but I know they’re still lacing when they can get away with it. The “salt” in the salted caramel blend is MSG. I have no idea what’s in the breakfast blend. Maybe Craig’s first chore should be getting me some Maxwell House.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Craig taking my room, and me taking the rest of the house. It’ll be nice to have him sequestered in one room, rather than roaming freely about the house. Plus, a change of scenery for the summer might do me good. Once I get into a really deep fugue in my room, I tend to forget leaving is an option. I have peed in the trash can. I _never_ pooped in my room. But yeah, I’ve peed in the trash can.

Still, I want to shower, and afterwards, I want to dry off and get dressed in my own room. I don’t feel one bit bad about waking Craig up at dawn; everyone else on the planet has already gotten enough sleep.

Upstairs, the door is closed. I don’t know why, since I’m going to be waking him up in a second anyway, but I’m very careful to keep it from creaking as I ease it open. The room’s dark; I keep my curtains duct-taped into place, and underneath that, the windows are papered over with tinfoil, which disrupts alien tractor beams and/or brain control waves, because I’m really just trying to get through things one day at a time at this point. I wish I’d brought my phone to use as a flashlight. He’d probably think it was weird if he woke up with my holding a light in his face, but I do weird shit all the time, so that might just fade into the static.

As it is, I just click on the lights.

Truth: I had a really, really nice dream.

Just as I’m about to roll over and pull the Tweek/Anna/Clyde’s dad (for some reason) hybrid close to go for yet another round, inhaling that savory-sweet scent Tweek’s always exuding, someone starts yelling. I’m able to incorporate it into the dream for just a second, until I get donkey kicked in the dick.

None of my instincts have a response for this prepared. I don’t even cry out in pain. After grabbing onto my groin to protect it from an incipient double-tap, every brain cell I have performs a collective shrug, and I start weeping like a child.

“WHY ARE YOU NAKED IN MY BED WHY ARE YOU NAKED IN MY BED.”

I can’t stop sobbing. Maybe inciting pity is the only defense mechanism I have at my disposal right now.

“CRAIG WHY ARE YOU CRYING.”

“Because you _kicked_ me in the _dick_!,” I whine through my tears. My feelings are hurt. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re _naked_. In my _bed_. With a fuck-ass _dang_.”

“What?” Blearily, I blink through the tears, finding Tweek somewhere in the smears of colors. He’s standing with his feet wide, fists balled, ready to strike again.

“Your _dicking fuck!_ You have a _barn-ron_! A fucking—a—” and then he just starts yelling. And then I just start yelling. And then we’re just yelling.

-

The sound of clinking spoons and chewing is deafening in the silence of the kitchen.

We sit on opposite sides of the little breakfast table, staring down into our bowls of mushy cereal. Store-brand Cheerios. I don’t like Cheerios, but I’m not about to say any unnecessary words. We’ve established that I went to bed wearing boxers, and that their removal must have been performed while I was still asleep. That’s all that needs said.

It’s Tweek, for once, that speaks up. “Do you want to go grocery shopping today?” He’s eerily calm. I saw him take something out of an envelope on his desk and put it in his mouth. I wish he’d offered me one. I’ve been sober long enough now that the constant brain fog I’ve maintained for the past few years is starting to clear. Reality sure does have a lot of sharp edges. The second I touch some cash, I’m calling Nathan. I know he fucks me over but I would pay just about any premium to avoid Stan’s moralizing.

“Sounds good.” I nod. I know Tweek smokes, so he probably has at least a little hanging around somewhere. I don’t really want to steal the kid’s bed, flash him my boner, and then try to beg drugs off of him all within a few hours, though. I’m trying not to suck so bad.

He’s staring down into his milk with unfocused eyes. Very carefully, he shapes out the words, “I’m going to call in a few prescriptions...and then I’m going to shower. Please stay downstairs.”

“Sure.” I nod firmly. It doesn’t seem like he heard me, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no matter what, this is my fave chapter


	14. MAKE MY CRUSH HIGH POP

Dare: keep trying to have a conversation. Hopefully not about dicks.

A pack of gummies costs about a week’s pay. I don’t really do weed that much, but I’ll nibble a little corner when I need to chill out but not go Special K stupid. I can make a pack last a few months, so the cost doesn’t seem all that high to me.

I ate a whole gummy.

My hands and feet keep trying to float away. I’ve got my feet weighed down with my body, but it takes a lot of effort to keep my hands below my shoulders. The little me that pilots my body around is laying face down on the cabin floor, but the autopilot is performing flawlessly. I have no trouble calling in my prescriptions. Then I have no problem quickly and quietly attending to my other needs.

My sex drive operates similarly to my hunger. Sometimes I have full-on ED. Like, trust me, there is _nothing_ that can be done to trigger a...response. And then other times, it takes stealthy use of certain accessories and a few changes of underwear just to get through a shift at work. A lot of people in this town think that I sneeze super weird.

The past couple weeks have been a pretty dry spell, but I guess that’s over now. I don’t really feel better after. Mostly just kind of depressed. I spend a long time disassociating in the shower. I’m still stoned off my ass.

Truth: having to walk old-lady slow so short people can keep up with me really pisses me off.

I can tell Tweek’s trying, but even so I have to keep stopping the cart and waiting ‘til he catches up. He’s breathing kind of hard. This shouldn’t be exercise. It’s not his fault he’s got teeny tiny tater tot legs, and I’m sure he’d prefer not to have scabbed-over little black bean lungs, but it doesn’t stop me from resenting him a little.

I’ve read through all the types of olives by the time he huffs and puffs up to my side.

“You good?” I ask, failing to prevent myself from sounding patronizing.

“ _Yes_.” He’s grabbing the cart to steady himself.

“You want a piggyback ride?” If he says no, I was just joking. If he says yes, I’m serious.

“ _No_.” Okay, just joking then.

The store’s not too crowded, since it’s early on a weekday. Still, Tweek’s doing a shit job of maneuvering himself around the other customers. He keeps letting himself get cut off and waiting around for people to move. He’s being polite. The grocery store is no place for manners. The grocery store is the place to unleash your inner Road Warrior.

The cart’s not too full. I would have no problem with stocking up, but Tweek’s insisting on playing it safe until I get paid. Clyde’s dad’s the owner, so he’s able to make all sorts of shortcuts to get me in and paid as soon as possible. Still, Tweek’s not exactly wrong; if we blow through his money in the first week and something falls through, we’re fucked.

I have to stop to let him get caught up again. I drum my fingers on the cart handle. I’m too sober for this shit. When he catches up, he looks just as annoyed with my as I feel at him.

“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.” He’s gonna be pissed, but I don’t care. I wrap both hands around his waist. With my thumbs slotted around his hips bones, my fingers meet behind his back. He’s instantly growling, showing his teeth, so I do it quick: I lift him up and over the side of the cart and plunk him down in an empty space. It’s about as hard as picking up a kitten.

He snaps at my hands like a chihuahua, but I’m faster than him, and I pull back before he can get me.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he growls. He’s not trying to crawl out, though. “Don’t pick me up without asking.”

He didn’t say not to pick him up. He just said to ask first. Interesting.

We’re rolling much faster now. I just push him along while he grabs things off of the shelves. He almost looks like he’s having a good time; he’s not exactly smiling, but he’s not frowning for once. Maybe a little cockily, I pick up the pace, making the cart rattle around on its uneven wheels. Soon we’re zooming along, not even shopping, just playing with the cart. I think he’s actually fighting a smile.

The baking aisle is empty. I’m feeling like a little shit, kind of high on Tweek’s energy. I take a few running steps, and then just as we hit the cake mixes, I hop onto the bottom rack. We coast for possibly a full second before physics chooses to remind us it exists: the whole cart tilts back on two wheels, lifting Tweek up into the air, sending him and the groceries rolling toward me. We both kind of scream until I step off, and everything slams back to the ground, loud as Hell.

He’s laughing. He has the worst laugh. He sounds like a threatened Chupacabra. I missed it so fucking bad, I feel like someone’s squeezing my heart. There’s a split second in which I have to choose to either laugh or cry; I laugh.

On the drive home, he plays aggro scream music on his phone and describes the difference between American and European metal. I hate metal. I listen anyway, hanging on every babbled word.

Happy and sad are fighting in my chest. It’s making me nauseous.


	15. YOU AND I IN A LITTLE TOY SHOP

Dare: cut my toenails.

Not all of them have to be hard.

Kenny’s really touchy-lovey. Not just with me. He’s always giving Stan and Kyle big, wet smooches on their cheeks, despite their general lack of appreciation. And even though Bebe beats him to mince meat every time, he practically jumps into her arms every time he sees her. Clyde and I might be his only friends that don’t drop him on his ass when he goes in for snuggles. Clyde because he’s sort of touch starved, and me because it’s hard to be shy with someone who’s rimmed you sore more times than I can count on one hand.

I’m running a pretty good streak of not admitting any of Kenny’s extremities inside of me. Sure, there’s kisses and the occasional over-the-clothes fondle, but nobody comes, so it doesn’t really count. It’s been since last November—eight months—since I got stupid smoking what was mostly baking powder and forgot why I’d put the kibosh on whatever it was we had going through freshman and sophomore year. Considering my previous streak was maybe six weeks, I’m feeling pretty confident that I no longer have a physical, biological need to slathered in Kenny’s saliva and other fluids on a tri-weekly basis.

Kenny’s the one who showed me that sex isn’t just a weapon. He was patient and gentle. He started slow, halting at every peep, waiting ‘til I asked in very specific words for him to continue. We—mostly he—worked at it for months, easing me up from flinching at every touch to a year later, when I had no qualms about getting rode rough on the floor while the goth kids looked on in indifference.

I’m not a slut. I just had a slutty phase.

There’s nothing loaded about his head lying in my lap, my fingers threaded through his slightly greasy hair. I don’t know anyone with thicker hair than Kenny. I think he might have that double-coat thing some dogs have.

Craig’s at work. He’s adjusting well to it. Clyde’s dad paid him at the end of his first week, right from the register. I think Clyde’s dad likes Craig. Not in a weird way. I just think his dad is maybe a little uncool, so he’s a little eager to please someone like Craig, who people treat like some kind of 21st century Fonzie. I know the guy. He’s much more Urkel.

His behavior isn’t irritating me all that much anymore. I guess he wasn’t really doing anything annoying at first, so much as I just found him, as an experience, wearing. He’s funny. He’s not really nice, exactly, but he’s considerate. In more ways than I expected, he’s a lot like the kid I dated for half of my sentient life. I guess most people don’t change _that_ much in three years. I did. But not most people.

I just wish the guy would wear more clothes.

“I’m still just—ugh—feeling really edgy, though. Just having him in the house.”

“Look,” we’re watching Arachnophobia, and Kenny points to the cow-sized spider on the screen, “there’s Craig.”

“Do you think it’s because I don’t have siblings? I’m just—ack—not used to there being...people in the house. My parents aren’t people.”

Kenny shrugs, eyes still stuck to the TV. “Dunno. I get pissed just knowing Kevin’s under the same roof as me. Are you pissed?”

“No, I’m not pissed.”

“Peeved? Irked? Ticked? Bothered? Bugged? Rustled?”

“No. It’s like...I’m waiting for him to do something, or say something, but I don’t really know what, exactly.” We’ve been eating meals together, watching TV together, normal stuff like that. We’ve even played some co-op on a console he rescued from his parents’ house. I feel like we’re cohabiting about as well as any two exes could hope to, but still. “Like every time he opens his mouth, I’m thinking, ‘here it comes,’ but I don’t know what it is, and it doesn’t come.”

“Hmmm. Hm.” Kenny lifts a finger to his mouth to gnaw at. I guess he has a hangnail or something. After a meditative silence, he speaks up again, in that slow, rambling way people do when they know they’re going to be talking for a while. “Do you ever talk to Butters or Cartman?”

“No. I follow them on Twitter. That’s it.”

Nobody talks about Cartman. It’s a really tragic story. During sophomore year, he started making phenomenally stupid Youtube videos that garnered millions of hate-watches. Using that money, he funded some group of college kids’ passion project, under the condition that he received a ludicrous percentage of any future profits. It was some kind of forum or something; I don’t really know. All I know is, through a Beautiful Mind-esque equation of trolling, counter trolling, and counter-counter trolling, the fat racist dickhead moron got it to take off as hard and as fast as Chinpokomon. The fucking piece of garbage shithead moved up to Denver, where he sits at the top floor of a skyscraper and does jack shit while underpaying recent graduates to run his company for him.

Really, it’s just heartbreaking.

Butters might be the only kid in town with worse parents than me. (Kenny’s parents are violent and neglectful, but at least they don’t go out of their way to cripple him.) Cartman put in an offer, and they sold him without a second of negotiation. Literally, they sold their child to another child for money. I guess Butters works as his assistant or secretary or something. I don’t know. I do my best to think about them as little as possible. It makes it hard to believe in God or karma or the concept of life having meaning.

“Okay so after they moved in with each other—”

“They moved in with each other? Cartman has all that money and he chooses to have a roommate?”

“Save your questions for the end. After they moved in with each other, they both told me that they were feeling kind of annoyed and distracted and whatever, like all the time. I mean Cartman didn’t say it like that but I know how to translate the shit he says into human-speak. So I gave them the same advice I always give: I told both of them they needed to get laid.

“So, I dunno, they both go ahead and do that—I dunno if they got hookers or what—and the next time I talk to them Butters is all merry-sunshine and Cartman’s...Cartman, but happy. So here’s what I’m figuring. People our age just...leak hormones into the air. Pheromones, maybe. And it’s not even cause you’re attracted to each other, really, it’s just something in the air, like whatever it is that makes chicks sync periods. I mean, if you ask me, sex is just kind of a part of basic hygiene. That’s why my skin is flawless, and my eyes shine like precious jewels.” I bump my knees up, making him bounce. “Okay, okay. But my advice is: fuck. Don’t fuck Craig though, obviously, ‘cause duh. But just find somebody to fuck, and fuck. Really get wrung out. Remember that one Labour Day weekend, junior year? The one where we spent the whole three days hiding out in Rancher What’s-his-tits’ hayloft? Like _that_ kind of fucked.”

Amused, I ask, “Oh, and who do you think I should ask to help me with this problem?”

“Well, I mean, if you’re besties with Da Vinci, why buy art from a farmer’s market?”

“What?” Just then, my phone vibrates. I shove Kenny out of my lap to dig around in my blanket-nest couch-bed. My wallpaper is a photo Kenny sent me Halloween night last year. He won’t tell me how he did it; I’m guessing he shopped it or borrowed someone else’s costume. He’s sitting on his bed, legs curled off to the side, giving double peace signs with his tongue stuck out playfully. His torse’s split from his collarbone to his groin, and his meat is pulled to either side, showing bloody ribs. Fake guts spill out past his lap, protecting his modesty. I probably shouldn’t use it as a wallpaper, but I’ve gotten away with weirder shit.

“’Leaving soon. Din? Can grab smth,’” I read aloud, mumbling the last word to pronounce it phonetically. I tilt my head to the side to kind of indicate to Kenny that I’m talking for me again. “Wanna stay for din?”

“Y’all buyin’?” Kenny tilts his eyes up to me, looking through his thick eyelashes. It’s affected as shit, but everything he does goes through me like a machete through a slutty camp counselor.

I read haltingly while I text back. “’How bout McD? Grab four piece for Kenny.’”

“Fifty piece.”

“Kid’s meal with the sliced apples.”

“And a toy?”

“Deal.”

Truth: I like Kenny, and I like Tweek, but being around them together is weird.

Kenny was first on the scene that day. He heard Tweek from inside his room, after I found out but before I could do anything. When I tried to call for an ambulance, they told me one was already on the way. Kenny’s the one who saved him. I should be appreciative of him, but I’m not. I’m jealous.

Figuring out a bunch of specific orders is complicated, so I just order a pile of nuggets and a pile of fries. We don’t bother divvying them up; we rip the bag open to use as a tablecloth and spread everything out on the coffee table and just grab at it like popcorn, taking the occasional hit from my trusty li’l vape. Kenny does full-minute pulls followed by full-minute holds. Anyone else, I’d make them kick in a few bucks, but the laws of the universe dictate that Kenny get things for free. I don’t know if it’s ‘cause he’s hot or ‘cause he’s pathetic, but something about him makes you wanna feed him treats and pat his head.

“I have seen more blood and gore in this past week than the rest of my life combined,” I state factually, watching a lady get a fishhook pulled out of her stomach through her throat.

“No you haven’t,” Kenny states even more factually. Kenny says shit like that all the time. It’s not worthwhile to question him.

Kenny and Tweek are cuddled under the same blanket on the couch, leaving me to sit on the floor. I like to stretch my legs out, anyway. They have kind of a weird energy together. Kind of a Stan-and-Kyle-esque platonic-romantic bond. Like a baby duckling that’s imprinted on someone, but they’re both the baby duckling. What’s weird is that they’ve gotten so close in only the past few years. In this town, if you weren’t with someone in second grade, you’ve missed your exit on making any sort of meaningful bond with them. I don’t begrudge them their friendship. I just wish they’d act a little more...heterosexual about it.

They look cute together. Two little blond, malnourished twinks. Like kitschy matched salt and pepper shakers. They’d look good on either side of you, one laying on each shoulder, fucked-out with half-lidden eyes, sighing contentedly as I rub sleepy circles into their bare hips with my fingertips—

God fucking damnit. I snatch a throw pillow out from under Tweek’s knee and hold it in my lap.

Something’s wrong with me. I’m supposed to be growing out having those kinds of thoughts, unbidden, any time, anywhere. I’m almost five years out from pretending to get charlie horses so I could squat down protectively in gym class. And I’ve never fantasized about Kenny in my life. I even found myself wondering how Clyde would wobble if he was getting slammed from behind. Thinking about Clyde like that feels like some kind of sex crime. The guy’s a hamster in a man’s body. If I hadn’t seen them myself, I wouldn’t even think he _had_ genitalia.

The girl with the fishhook is dead. She’s dead, and I’m sitting here with a quarter-chub.

Once everything gets settled down, I move to the kitchen. Kenny and Tweek are yakking about something you’d have to have seen the movie about seventeen times to even notice. I half-listen to them talk as I open the fridge and stare inside. I just ate about a pound of deep-fried reconstituted food product, but the cold air feels good, so I pretend to keep searching.

Out in the living room, their voices go low. It sounds like they might be talking shit. They can talk shit—everybody talks shit—but it’s just an unnecessary extra layer of frosting on the dickbag cake to do it not eight feet from where I’m standing. I grab a can of pop from the fridge and do my best to oh-so-very-casually stroll back into the living room.

They’re kissing. Just like we used to.


	16. YOU LET THAT GUY IN YOUR HOUSE! NOW YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THE NONCON TAG! NONCON!

Dare: survive this trainwreck.

I’m feeling bubbly and giddy. Kenny keeps cracking me up with this old shtick we have about the Kramer from Saw being the same Kramer from Seinfeld. It’s moronic, but it gets to me every time. When Craig goes to the kitchen, he asks for a quick kiss. If Craig weren’t nearby, I would say no, but sneaking a quick one sounds like a fun dare, so I lean in just real quick. He probes a little tongue in, though, so I give him just that one more moment, but that’s enough.

It shouldn’t actually matter if Craig sees us kissing. That was part of the fun of the dare, that if we failed it’d just be funny.

I barely have a chance to pull our lips apart when I feel Kenny jerked back from me. Craig’s standing over us with a fistful of Kenny’s hair. Kenny doesn’t look shocked or hurt. He just looks furious. I thank God/Buddha/the vast uncaring expanse of the universe that Craig lets go after just a second. He looks surprised. Kenny’s jaw unclenches, at least.

“What the fuck, dude?” Kenny snaps. I can tell by his tone that he’s angry, but there’s no immediate danger of bloodshed. I exhale.

“What the fuck are you doing?,” Craig demands. He’s deflating rapidly, coming to his senses, hopefully. Craig may be huge, but I haven’t yet met anyone who can last more than a few seconds against Kenny. I don’t need him doing anything stupid.

“We were kissing,” I growl, standing to get between them. “What’s your fucking problem?”

Craig just glares down at me, eyes flicking over my face. After the pressure builds past his limit, he hisses through grit teeth, “What, are you two together?”

“What if we are?” Kenny sounds almost smug. His smile drops when he sees my face, though.

“We’re _not_. We’re not anymore. But I’ll kiss him if I want. Why the fuck are you acting like I need your permission to do _anything_?”

Craig turns back to Kenny, but I position myself more tightly up against him, blocking him off from stepping any closer. His breath slams out through his nose for a moment, before he turns back to me. “So what, you fuck your exes? Is it just him, or is it anyone but me?”

“Craig, stop.” Kenny actually sounds worried.

He’s not gonna say it. I know he’s not. But still, I put my hand flat on his chest and demand, “Just shut up for a second.”

The room is still as I do my five in, five hold, five out.

“Craig,” my voice is firm but calm, “go upstairs before you say something you regret.”

He doesn’t pause. He doesn’t show any bravado. He obeys like he’s grateful for the opportunity.

He didn’t say it, but I saw it in his face. _“Do you still get gangfucked by methheads?”_

Truth: I fucking hate myself and if someone shoved a gun down my throat and pulled the trigger I would thank them.

I didn’t say it. I thought it. I’ve never thought it before. I didn’t even believe it. I just wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to feel even worse than me. But I didn’t say it. Maybe I would have if he didn’t stop me.

I guess I’m in love with him. Fuck. That’s the worst thing I could do to him right now.

I don’t remember falling in love with him for a second time. When was it? At the grocery store? When he touched my back and I felt the entire universe explode outwards from my center? While we sat in the back of the coffee shop? When we were eating my shitty pancakes and he got food on his face, just like always?

Just like always.

Fourth grade. That’s when I fell in love with him. There was no second time.

I lie down in the bed I don’t deserve and smell the scent I don’t deserve. I press the heels of my hands hard into my eyes, making neon fireworks burst in the blackness.

Tweek deserves someone like Kenny. Tweek deserves Kenny. Kenny’s beautiful. Everyone loves him. The world moves around Kenny. Even now, I can’t hate him. Kenny’s the one who saved him, not me. Kenny’s the hero. Kenny’s his hero. It was always Kenny. It’s Kenny. Kenny. Kenny. Kenny.

Kenny found him out back. Kenny called the ambulance. Kenny went to the hospital, and waited all night while they did the surgery, and Kenny stayed all day in the recovery room. When he cried, it was to Kenny. When he healed, it was for Kenny. The new self he built out of the wreckage—that was his thanks to Kenny.

Kenny. Kenny.

Kenny never saw that fucking video. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair. It’s not fucking fair that after all those years, after every meaningful and real moment of my life, Kenny was there, and I just watched the video. It’s not fair that I ended up just like everyone else. It was me all along, up until that one fucking day. Up until that one fucking day.

I don’t remember the video. I only watched it once. It was dark. I kept closing my eyes. But I remember the sound. Grunting. Laughter. Glass breaking. Someone tells Tweek to open his eyes. Whoever’s holding the camera is talking to Tweek’s dad. She’s telling him that this is just the interest on the money he owes them. She’s telling Tweek to smile for his daddy. Skin slapping together. Glass scratching and scraping on concrete. There are so many voices. Tweek’s trying to scream, but his mouth is covered. I can still hear what he’s trying to say.

He’s calling out to me. He’s begging me to save him. Me. And I was at home, playing video games. I didn’t hear him ‘til ten minutes later, when I got the message from Tweek’s phone, when I opened it and watched until I understood where he was and called the police. They sent it to Tweek’s dad. And then they sent it to me.

It was me he was calling for. It was me he needed. It was me who was supposed to be his hero.

It was always me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i bled and cried to hit 40k in nov how did i doodyshit out 24k in a week


	17. TWO INFECTED BAND-AIDS

Dare: think about it. All of it.

In my life there have been four great tragedies. The first was the worst, and the source of all of the others. The single worst thing that has ever happened to me or will every happen to me is this: I was born my parents’ kid. There’s no recovering from that. It’s not a matter of “strong enough” or “overcoming obstacles” or any of that shit. I was born fucked.

The next three all took place within a single week in mid-October, freshman year.

Number one:

After school, on a Tuesday, my dad gave me an envelope full of bills and take my weekly trip over the tracks, to the shed out behind Kenny’s house. My dad always said I was picking up our “special ingredient”, but I’d known it was meth since third grades. I’ve never been as stupid as my parents think I am.

When I got to the door, they invited me inside. It wasn’t typical, but it wasn’t unheard of. I didn’t think anything of walking into the darkness. I liked the smell of the cough syrup and the way the chemicals scraped my sinuses. Someone took the cash and started pulling out individual bills, pulling them flat and holding them up to the single bulb overhead, checking for watermarks. I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. I just waited for them to tell me why I was there.

I guess my dad had been slipping counterfeits in with the money. That’s all I know.

The video they took was seven minutes long. I don’t know how long I was actually in there. I was drifting in and out of consciousness when they threw me outside. I heard Kenny’s voice, and I felt his hands flat on my cheeks. I felt his mouth on the heels of my palms, sucking glass from my wounds. My wrists and my knees stung so brightly I couldn’t even see. I didn’t feel anything else.

When I first remembered how to think, I was in a bed, caged on three sides by plastic curtains. Kenny was there, squished up to sit beside my head, and my parents, standing past my feet. The first thing I thought was, “mommy.” The next was “don’t go,” as she pushed out past the curtain in search of a doctor. Third, I thought, “Craig.” That was when my dad started talking.

He said when the paramedics loaded me up, I was inside-out. He didn’t have to tell me that. He wanted to. He didn’t say sorry. He didn’t look sorry. He looked like he was watching a TV show: excited, but safe. Unaffected.

Craig came the next day. He was with his parents. We didn’t really talk. He wouldn’t look me in the eye; he kept his eyes on the needle taped to the inside of my elbow, feeding me full of painkillers, keeping my pupils fat and my mind useless. He leaned down to hug me before he left, but it was hard with me lying down and him standing. He just kind of put his hands on my shoulders and leaned down.

I don’t know why Kenny stayed. He must have been bored. He told me he likes hospitals. They’re easy to sleep in, he said. He knew how to keep clean and comfortable when you can’t even sit up. He knew which of the two meal options were the worst. He knew how to talk to the nurses to get what you need.

Craig texted me. I didn’t have anything to say back.

Number two:

The video was sent to my dad, and to Craig. That’s it. I guess they thought that was mean enough. But I guess for someone, that just wasn’t enough. Not when tragedy sells.

The town of South Park has the same social media presence as most towns. Twitter, Facebook, whatever. It’s run by someone who works for the mayor or something. I don’t know. Because the town’s so small, just about everybody follows some incarnation of it. They post notices about events and the schools and road maintenance, and they share photos people take around town. A lot of cute pet and baby pics. Nothing special.

Every account that followed the South Park pages received an identical direct message from recently created, empty accounts. No words. Just a video.

And you know what sucks? You know what really fucking sucks? Business really did boom for a month or so there. Everybody wanted to let my parents know how sorry they were for what happened to them. Everyone wanted to orbit around what happened, close enough to watch but too far to help.

Except Craig.

Number four:

Truth: I tried as best I knew how to. I was terrified.

It didn’t happen to me. I know that. I wasn’t the victim. But there I was, fifteen, with my mom’s hand on the small of my back. And there was Tweek—tinier than I’ve ever seen him, tinier than when we met back in preschool—with needles in his arms and a look like we’d never met. That was my whole life in that bed. There was the night I kept planning and then putting off because I was so terrified of things changing. There was the little apartment with the guinea pig run taking up half the living room and the one cramped bed we’d spend all weekend in. There was the chintzy little wedding ceremony I’d always said I didn’t want, with homemade cupcakes and dorky suits and big yellow flowers everywhere. There was my love story, torn apart and stitched back together, but wrong.

I texted him. I didn’t really know what to say. When he got out of the hospital, I should have gone to see him. I shouldn’t have waited. But I just texted. I asked him if he wanted me to come over, and he didn’t respond. I went to school. Kenny didn’t. I went home and I smoked until I couldn’t tell the floor from the ceiling. I knew everyone knew. I knew everyone blamed me for not being there. Everyone heard Tweek call for me, and everyone knew I never came. I still haven’t come. People talked, and I let them.

I tried. The sixth day, I came to his door. He was on his feet. Just barely. He didn’t invite me inside. Carefully, awkwardly, wincing and gasping, he led me to his driveway. I tried to grab his arm to steady him, but he pulled back.

He said, “I can’t be with you right now.”

For nearly four years, I’ve been answering him in my head. I say, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I wish it had been me instead of you. I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you since then. I was so scared. I was scared you’d hate me. I’m scared you need more than I can give you. I’m not smart or strong enough to help you. I should have just been there. I should have just held your hand and stayed with you. I love you more than anything. I’ll do anything if it would just make you feel a little bit better. You can be as angry as you want. You can hit me and scream at me and tell me it’s all my fault. If you want me to leave now, I will, if that’s what will help you. But please come back. When you can. When you’re ready for me. Whether you’re better or worse. I don’t have anything without you. I’ll put my life on pause, and I’ll wait until you come back for me. I’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes. I love you. I love you. I’ll always be here, loving you, waiting.”

But I didn’t say that.

I said, “Okay.”

And then I left.


	18. YOU'RE THE ONLY THING I KNOW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just a pallet cleanser. palette. one of those. (idk if everyone played ToD with the rule that you got a certain amount of "chicken"s where you got to skip? well)

Chicken

The other kids always made crass jokes about Craig and Tweek. They’d talk about anal and blowjobs and rimming and all the things fifth graders know the words for but not the actual verb, filling in definitions with adults’ reaction.

Craig had kissed girls. Tweek had kissed one. Craig got tongue, just once. Being caught up with their peers, at least in this sense, provided a little cushion. As long as they’d kissed someone, they could get away with their innocent, nearly touchless relationship for just a little while longer. Girls were easy to kiss. Girls and boys kiss every day. You could be boyfriend and girlfriend one day, and then push them off the playground the next day. Boyfriend and boyfriend was different. Just holding hands was a lifelong commitment. It was an identity.

It was a full year and change before the day lunchtime conversation turned to lies about hand jobs and which girls wore bras. Like asking an immigrant to translate swear words, the boys cast their spotlight on Tweek and Craig. A few “shut ups” delayed the inevitable, just until recess.

Tweek held Craig’s mitten tight in his little hand, tugging him along, dodging jump ropes and balls like they were maneuvering through a side-scroller. Out behind the dugout pit, where the recess monitors couldn’t see, they chased off a few second graders, and then stood, breathing, hands trembling together.

“I’m gonna kiss you,” Tweek stated factually, the tremor of his eyelashes belying his terror.

“Okay,” Craig responded with a nod.

Tweek lifted himself up onto his toes. Craig craned his head down. Like plunging into cold water, they pushed together before they had time to hesitate. Their teeth collided with a clack.

After a moment to let the pain pass, Craig moved his hands to Tweek’s shoulders. “Let’s keep our mouths closed.” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word “lips” for some reason.

Tweek affirmed with a nod. He steadied himself with a tight grip on Craig’s forearms, but stood still, poised on his toes. Hypocritically, Craig wished he would close his eyes. They tilted their heads this time, so that when they met again, the sides of their noses pressed together.

It was just long enough to memorize. It didn’t make a sound. When they pulled back, Tweek’s eyes retreated to Craig’s mouth, where the crook of his teeth peered out from his barely parted lips. Craig looked to the sky.

“Was that okay?” Tweek asked, before relinquishing to a hard twitch he’d been barely herding back.

“Yeah,” Craig, once again, nodded. “Was it, um...did you like it?”

“I—I think so? Do you want to do it again? Not right now, but, uh, sometime?”

Craig’s cheeks were stinging. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t that cold. “Yeah. Maybe later.”

There was no rush. They thought they had a lifetime.


	19. I CAN'T BE YOUR FRIEND

Dare: let yourself feel better.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” I insist to Kenny, holding his shirt balled in my fists. “Please don’t think anything’s wrong.”

“You’re fine, Tweety.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. He’s got really full lips. His kisses are always so pillowy. “What do you want to do?”

“What do you mean?” He kisses overtop of my ear. The sound of his breath and the wetness inside his mouth gives me goosebumps.

“Do you want Craig to stay? Do you want to make him leave?” He ghosts his lips over my lymph node, trailing just over my skin, making the hair on my neck and my legs prickle.

“No...” No more tears are falling. My mouth is still sticky. Crying always makes me feel itchy and hot. Kenny’s tongue presses to my jugular. I can feel someone’s heartbeat; not sure if it’s his or mine. “He can stay...he just needs to— _uhn_ —” he bites my earlobe softly, like he’s just reminding me his lips and tongue come with teeth. “Kenny, stop...”

Kenny’s only love language is sex. He taught me; I don’t know who taught him. Kenny doesn’t talk about the past much. Not in literal terms. When he nibbles at my collarbone, there’s no pressure. When he pulls my collar down to suckle bruises into my chest, I know he’s saying, “ _I love you, I love you, I love you...”_

I try to protest again, but I’m too dizzy. All I manage between breaths is “Kenny, Kenny...”

Why was I telling him to stop? I don’t remember. It can’t have been a good enough reason. I don’t remember lying down, but I am. I don’t remember taking off our clothes, but I feel our skin slide together, uninterrupted. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. Having him inside of me is as natural as being in my own home. There’s only one word I’ll ever need while I’m getting fucked.

Truth: I don’t know what it feels like to have your insides torn out, but it can’t hurt as bad as hearing Tweek screaming Kenny’s name from below.

\--

“I thought you knew.” Clyde shrugs despite his heavy armload of stacked shoe boxes.

“Don’t you think I would have said something if I knew?” We’re in the teeny tiny backroom, trying to get the appropriately sized shoes back into their boxes after customers just tossed any ol’ where. I hate customers. When I go into a store, I hate myself for being a customer.

He shrugs again, and then drops his unsorted pile on the table, right on top of the sorted pile. I wanna be cool to Mr. Donovan since he only hired me as a favor, but I’m crabby from being up all night, not crying. I get paid by the hour, not by progress on any given task. I’ll start the pile over. I don’t care.

“I thought you were over him. You haven’t really talked about him in the past few years.”

“I’m not gonna talk about my feelings, dude. I’m gay but I’m not a chick.”

“I talk about my feelings every day.”

“I know, Clyde.” I shoot him a flat expression of discontent. His bottom lip wobbles instantly. “You thought I just dropped him like that? After...” I hesitate for a moment before I reroute my sentence, “after we’d been together for eight years?”

Clyde starts counting on his fingers. I’m glad he’s as bad at math as I am, ‘cause I’m not super sure about that number. He gives up after a second. “I just thought you were a huge asshole. I mean, in general, that’s kind of a safe assumption.”

I scowl, sorting shoes silently for a minute, before I speak up again. “Do you really think I’m an asshole? Well, like—do you think I’m mean?”

“Uh. Yeah.” His mouth pulls to the side. “Sorry, but...yeah.”

I take a second to be mad at him for telling me the truth before transitioning to being mad at myself. “I don’t want to be mean. Well, to some people, yeah, but not to you.”

I didn’t voice an apology, but I guess he’s known me long enough, ‘cause he smiles meekly and says, “That’s okay. I know you love me.”

It takes every ounce of sapience I’ve ever developed to fight the instinct to deny it. “Who broke up with who?”

“I’m not super sure but I think Tweek’s the one who called it off. Kenny still acts like he wants to get back with him, I think. But also he’s just kind of like that so who knows. We’re not exactly blood brothers or anything. All we ever talk about is boobs and food.”

“When?”

“Like at school and stuff.”

“No, dip—when did they break up?”

“Oh. Mm maybe a year ago? Let’s see...freshman year...sophomore year...okay, then the start of junior year was when they ‘broke up.’” He has to shuffle around with what he’s holding to free up his hands to make air quotes, which kinda ruins the effect. “But like, they act the same as when they were together. I don’t even know if they ever said they were boyfriends or dating or whatever. I know they were doin’ it. Maybe that’s just when they stopped doin’ it. Until last night.”

I shoot him a deathglare that he actually deserves. He averts his eyes. Clyde wouldn’t get away with half the shit he does and says if it weren’t for his big, dim-wit doe eyes. Maybe some day I’ll be able to make myself vulnerable enough to actually say sappy stuff like that. I got pretty sappy with Tweek. It’s not really that I regret that so much as that I wish every embarrassing thing I’d ever said could get wiped from his memory. If any of my friends actually knew that once, under a full moon, I’d literally cried at how pretty he was, they’d crucify me. I sure as hell would if I weren’t me.

Damn maybe I really am mean.

“Okay, if you quote me on this, I’ll tell everyone you hallucinated it in a seizure while also crapping your pants, but lemme ask: do you think you’ve ever been really, like, actually in love? And Raisins girls don’t count.”

“Uhh. Huh. I don’t really think I ‘loved’ Lola, really. Not that I’m not still pissed at you over that. Am I in love with Bebe?”

“No, you’re not in love with Bebe.”

He accepts this placidly. “Tell me what being in love feels like. Maybe I have and I just didn’t know it.”

I put the shoes down. I’m doing about one pair every three minutes, anyway. It’s really just a feeling. I can’t explain it any more than I can describe what a color is. My best attempt is a complicated performance of semaphore via my hands and a bunch of frustrated sighing.

“You look like you’re trying to do calculus in your head.”

I allow myself one more deep, long sigh, and then do my best. “It’s like...like, it’s super important that they like you, but it almost kind of doesn’t matter because the only thing you can think about is how much _you_ like _them_. Like, you just wanna watch them and be near them and just like, bask in his presence, I guess? And like every single thing he does is either the most important, most amazing thing that’s ever happened to you, or the most devastating? And even when you find out things that you don’t like about him, you don’t like _him_ any less? This is so gay.”

“Don’t be a homophobe. My best friend’s gay.”

“Okay, here: when you think about them being like, eighty, and being all shriveled up and wrinkly and gross, and you’re actually _excited_ to be nasty old people together. There. That’s it.”

Clyde works in silence for a minute. I’m not even bothering to pretend anymore. I just sit on the table and stare off into the middle distance and wonder if Tweek wants to be old with Kenny.

“Dude,” I jump just a little when he finally speaks up, “I’m not gay, and even if I was I wouldn’t be _in_ love with you, but if you need someone to get smelly and old with, I’m here.”

_You’re already smelly._

_Damn, dude, that’s some specific denial._

_Just fucking clock him._

It’s hard to sort the mean shit out from the true shit. “That sounds pretty great, actually.” His chubby-cheek smile is definitely worth the effort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s2g i'm not doing cryde. friendship is a super duper meaningful type of love


	20. I MISS THAT DAY YOU SPIT ON ME

Dare: communicate your ~~desires~~ needs

So there’s this one cheesy kung-fu movie I saw once. During the opening, before the credits—it’s one of those old movies where the credits are at the beginning and then again at the end—this little, unassuming guy that you know is the protagonist ‘cause he’s on the DVD cover and all that, he’s in a generic tournament kind of pit. And then this huge guy comes out from the opposite end, y’know, eight feet tall and eight feet wide, facial hair, all that. So they meet in the middle and the little guy gives the big guy one weak little pussy karate chop to the calf, and then the big guy and all the audience laughs at how pathetic it was, but then the big guy just stops. And the little guy backs up all smug-like, and then the big guy drops face-down, and maybe he’s dead. They’re never very clear in movies like that. Then once they’ve established how badass the MC is, the title drops.

That’s what it feels like having sex with Kenny. He’s not doing anything that seems all that flashy, but then you’re face-down on the carpet, frothing at the mouth, and every single one of your toes is sticking off at a unique angle. I don’t think I’ve ever actually asked him to do anything, aside from the occasional demand of “again”; that’d be like trying to give a roller coaster directions to the end of the track.

However, I’m a little different now than I was a few months ago. Doing my dares has made me a little braver, bit by bit.

Kenny works in the evenings, mostly, unloading delivery trucks at Wal-Mart. He’s pretty diligent about being home at night if Karen’s there. If there’s trouble at home during the day, she just walks into town and waits it out. He doesn’t want her doing that alone at night, though, and I agree. (Kenny’s told me that Karen is the only McCormick kid with the self-preservation instincts not to piss off their dad, so his only real concern is her getting caught in the middle of something.) Other than that, neither one of us has anywhere to go or anything to do. Getting laid again feels like going back on a drug I’d struggled to quit, and I wanna spend all day every day as high as I can get. We’re spending all morning tangled together on the couch, and then the afternoons on the back porch, before going inside and splashing around in the tub until Kenny has to go to work. We’re even using my bed when Craig’s not home, without bothering to wash the sheets after.

I have no problem with Craig knowing, or hearing, or even seeing sometimes. It’s still my house. It’s still my choice.

But after maybe a week of a nearly uninterrupted pattern of sex, orgasms, and afterglow, I work up the courage to ask Kenny for something new for the first time. I don’t go over the tracks, so he has to carry the big box over to my house. By the time he gets here, his arms are shaking from the exertion.

“How do you afford all of these?” I’m in awe at the absolute volume of rubber and pleather and stainless steel within the box. I’ve had my tongue inside of Kenny’s asshole, but I’m still a little squeamish as I pick up a meat-red dildo and wiggle it like I’m doing the magic pencil trick.

“Uh, some are hand-me-downs. This one,” he picks up a modestly-sized plastic vibrator, “was my mom’s.”

“Dude. What the fuck?”

“I cleaned it. And then this rabbit was Bebe’s. I just use it with girls, though. It’s kinda made for vaginas, specifically. But here’s what we’re looking at for now—” he plucks out a rubber dick with molded veins and a thick base, “this is seven inches. So I think that’s a good size up from what you’re used to, right?”

“Uh. I guess? Ack.” Nothing that happened before Kenny counts. It really doesn’t, since after the surgery, I was sort of back to a clean slate down there. It wasn’t a sexual experience, anyway, just a violent one. I’m not sure how much of a difference the extra inch or two is going to make. I’m not sure how much of a difference I _want_ it to make. “How much am I supposed to do at a time? Like, how much have you done?”

“Don’t ever use me as a blueprint for anything. What’s with the sudden interest in leveling up on the sluttery, anyway? You got a crush on a dude with a dig-ass bick?”

“No! I just...” I twitch hard, making me drop the dildo. It bounces a little when it lands back in the box. This all feels so stupid. “I guess I just wanna try something new? I mean, bigger stuff feels _better_ , right?”

Kenny purses his lips as he thinks. “It’s kind of unfortunate that I was your first, ‘cause everything from then on will just be a let-down. I’m supportive of your interest in trying new things, though. Maybe next we can try out this thing I wanted to do. I asked Mercedes, but she just got mad and broke three of my fingers. Joke’s on her, though, cuz it was the middle three.” He wiggles his index, middle, and ring fingers, “Them’s my fingerin’ fingers. That’s the secret to bagging Raisins chicks. They all munch each other, but they can’t do any hand stuff ‘cause they all have thotty nails. I don’t even think they like dick. They just want to cum and get paid. But like, damn, if I looked like that, same. ...What were we talking about?”

“Uhhh I don’t remember.”

“Huh. Well, let’s shove this up your ass, then.”

Truth: sometimes I wonder if I just need to get laid.

I always kinda figured Tweek would be a screamer, and now I know for _absolute_ sure. Maybe this is just my karma for being an asshole for the last eighteen years. But God damn, this seems awful harsh punishment for just one lifetime of dickery.

I think they’re going out of their way to show off how much they’re fucking. Possibly because of a fetish. Or maybe they’re just really shitty at being sneaky. But—maybe I’m self-aggrandizing here—it almost feels like they’re trying to put on a show for me. Any self-respecting person would’ve found a new place to stay by now. But, well, you know. We don’t really do meals or watch TV or anything anymore. I guess I’m just here to see what happens next, at this point.

Down in the kitchen, I’m eating a pot of ramen at the table while scrolling through my phone. I’ve been really into depressing and often suicidal memes lately. Gee, I wonder why. The ceiling was shaking not too long ago, but it’s stilled for now. I put my phone own to tip the broth into my mouth when I hear footsteps on their way into the room. Not Tweek’s small-but-fast steps. Kenny.

He’s got just an empty pillowcase wrapped around his waist. There’s a poorly-wiped smear of cum on his collarbone. For how much time the guy spends indoors, his skin is such a beautiful gold color. I really fucking rue the fact that if he asked me point-blank right now, I’d probably fuck him myself.

He doesn’t look at me as I pass, just biffs me gently on the back of the head as he struts to the fridge. “Sorry ‘bout the noise. We’re doin’ it on the floor, so no worries about the bed.” He locates a can of beer that I guess he put in earlier, then bumps the door shut with his hip. I don’t fucking know why, but he sits across from me at the table, taking a long slug off of the foam.

I let my chin rest on my elbow. He’s definitely trying to piss me off. It’s not really working. He’s just beating a dead horse at this point. “You got a spare one-a those?”

“Oh.” Kenny’s good at hiding emotions, but when he doesn’t show any one in particular, that’s when you know he’s burying something. “Yeah, there’s a few in the fridge. Help yourself. I guess you bought half the food I’m noshing here, anyway.”

I think his bare ass might be on the chair. Gross. I go ahead and grab a beer from the crisper. It’s just cheap shit, but being just a little buzzed right now would be great. I’m not really a big drinker in general. When I sit back down, he’s mouthing at the rim of the can, his Blue Hawaii eyes tracking me neatly.

“So how long are you planning on staying?” He asks. There’s no way to make that sound casual.

I shrug. “I’m still looking for a job that’ll make me enough to live on. Guess I gotta find an apartment after that. Probably some roommates. I dunno. Guess I gotta bail before the Tweaks get home after Tweek’s birthday.” 

“Aren’t they not coming back until the 31st?”

“Yeah...and the 31st is after the 17th.”

“Oh, yeah. Guess you’re right.”

He takes another long drink of his beer. I pop mine open and drink for as long as I can before the brain freeze kicks in. I fucking hate the taste of beer, so I minimize the amount of aftertaste I have to struggle through my taking as big of drinks as I can. It does that thing where the bubbles go up your sinuses or whatever; I kinda snort on it. He watches like a cat watching a milk jug ring.

“Why not just stay with Clyde or Token or one of your other friends?”

I sense a small shift in the atmosphere of the room. I think that instead of pissing me off like he’d planned, he’s the one getting pissed. I’m not trying to stir the turd, but I sit just a little higher in my chair. “Eh, I’m here. Plus, it’s kinda nostalgic, y’know? I had a lot of firsts in this house.” I don’t know what he and Tweek have discussed, but I choose to leave that statement open to interpretation.

“Hmm.” He holds his can between his thumb and forefinger, letting it rock back and forth like the cabs on a ferris wheel. “It’s not hard for you to be here? Like, what with Tweek and I being, y’know?”

I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t just done the same thing, but the fact that he chooses to let me interpret what he means rather than give me any concrete terms is interesting. I parlay that little boost into the confidence to convincingly say, “Not really.”

“Huh. Cool.” His whole face sort of hops up the way it does when you’re trying to be super casual about being interested in something. “I always kinda wondered if it was a dick move for me to take Tweek without asking you first...I mean, I know it was a super weird situation, but bro code or whatever. You know.”

“Yeahhh...” I put my can on the table next to my empty pot so that I can lean back. “I know I got really weird last week, but for real, Tweek has never been my property or anything like that. He can do what he wants. I mean like, I actually kinda wanna thank you, for picking up the pieces like you did. You’ve always been a lot more, uh, emotionally mature than a lot of the guys. Like, I feel like I kinda shat what whole mess up ‘cause I was just fifteen then, but you were just fourteen, weren’t you?”

Kenny takes in a long, long breath through his nose, eyes loose on the table. He lets it out just as slow. “Yeah. I was.” Suddenly, he throws the last of the beer down the back of his throat. He slams the can down hard, burps, and kicks hard up and out of the chair, giving me an accidental ween-shot. Nothing special. “I’m going back upstairs. Help yourself to the beers. Really.”


	21. wring my neck i wont feel a thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this chapter and then deleted it cuz i thought it was too complicated and an unnecessary escalation from the kinda down-to-earth thing i was going for but my wife told me to put it back in so i rewrote it but a lot lot shorter

Nothing works for me. If I were a video game, I wouldn’t even be in beta yet. I don’t die. I don’t even not die consistently. Sometimes I leave a corpse. Sometimes I die from stuff that wouldn’t kill a normal person, or I don’t die from things that would kill anyone else. Sometimes I come back that night. One time it took a whole year. Nobody remembers. People around me forget things all the time, like things we’ve done, or people we’ve met. Years keep repeating. I went through fourth grade over twenty times. New things happen, and everyone keeps counting the years, but they don’t realize we’re doing the same grades, and turning the same ages, and learning the same fucking lessons over and over and over. I don’t know if time is actually passing from some kind of extradimensional way. I don’t know how old I really am, or if I’m _really_ any age. It’s hard to keep track.

I was going through my first run of my freshman year when I heard Tweek out behind my house. I called the ambulance and stayed with him because that’s what I always wished people would do for me. I kept by his side at the hospital because I didn’t have anywhere else in particular to be, and I didn’t want to leave him with his parents, who are fucking monsters. I thought Craig would come and relieve me of duty any minute, but he didn’t.

I probably would have just bailed once he was in a not-immediately-about-to-die state, but I started to become a little fascinated by him. “Like looking into a mirror” is a cliche, but that’s really what it was like. Like seeing your reflection when you’re way too high. Repugnance at the fact that this disgusting, misshapen slab of flesh and teeth and hair has been the shape that the world has defined you as. Admitting to yourself with some shame that you’re beautiful in so many ways. Finding all the animal and all the divine in the curves. Touching the glass and touching yourself and feeling where it’s different and where it’s the same.

He was born to parents who shouldn’t have been allowed to be in the same room as children, let alone make them themselves. Every other adult, and every other institution, witness what was going on, and did nothing. They thought he was quirky. They thought he was some kind of Don Bluth protagonist. His friends couldn’t help.

They videotaped me. They showed everyone what happened. Everyone watched because it was fun. They wanted to see and say, “someone should do something,” and then just forget. I’m not even mad at the people who actually did it. They’re not people. They don’t have interiority. I’m mad at the people who didn’t stop it.

When I saw how fucked up he was, it made me realize how fucked up I was. I thought that maybe if I led him, and he led me, we could fix ourselves.

Tweek and I were together for a long, long time.

At first we were being gentle to each other, trading that softness we’d never had. I wanted him to do everything I could do, and I wanted to do everything he could do. I taught him how to love sex. I taught him how to love violence. I wanted him to dip his toes into the most awful parts of the world—the parts I’d be born in. He showed me how to let myself be angry. He didn’t mean to, necessarily, but he did. I saw him lean and need and ask for help. I saw him ask for help again and again, being so fucking stupid, thinking maybe the thousandth time will turn out differently from the nine hundred and ninety ninth. I tried to learn. It worked, just a little. I really tried as hard as I could. I really, really tried.

Tweek and I were in love for nineteen Christmases and nineteen birthdays. We turned sixteen over and over and over again. We marveled at the first signs of spring, hand in hand, nineteen times. I watched him bounce and grin in the theater, at the opening night of the sequel of his favorite movie, and then at the third installation, the fourth, and the fifth. He didn’t realize they’d all come out within the time it took him to finish a single year of school. I watched as he became an artist, as he built himself into shape after shape. He was just a few months out from that one day in October for a decade. He mourned and healed and mourned again. I thought we were growing and changing together. I thought something was finally changing.

But by our third run-through of junior year, when he told me that he just wanted to be friends, that’s when I realized that we weren’t side by side like I’d thought. He’d lapped me a hundred times over.

Things never really change in South Park. Not really. But I think Tweek changed. And I think maybe I changed, just a little. Not enough.

I’ll tear the fucking planet to shreds with my teeth. I’ll smash every last star in the galaxy. I’ll rip my way free of time, break out of whatever it that forms the shell around existence. Whatever it takes to finally change.

And there’s not a fucking chance Craig will ruin this for me. Not a _fucking_ chance.


End file.
